A Is for Art: A Is for Art

I think this book is terrific. It challenges the reader whether child or adult and that's okay. If you want to spend some quality time with your child helping them learn, go for it. If you yourself learn something along the way, bonus. Take the letter E for example. Earthworm, egg, eagle, ear and exclamation point are easy but when you get to enigmatic or elongated get the dictionary. And what a great way to illustrate what the word elongated means by referencing an earthworm. When you get to the Eiffel tower show them how to find France on the map and talk about architecture. Egg and dart is an architectural term. Show them why it's called that. I am a docent at a significant art museum. You would be surprised what kids can comprehend. Kudos to Mr. Johnson for not being afraid to share complex art concepts with children. Believe me, they can handle it. I can see a grade school teacher or home school teacher using each letter as a lesson plan. This book not only illustrates art concepts and techniques but also shows how math (letter Q and G, golden ratio), science (the letter I), language skills and geography (letter E) find their way into art.

My kids, aged six and under, love this book. We take our time reading it so they can spot all the hidden letters and try to figure out the art. Because the works depicted are so different, so full of colors, and so much fun to look at the kids enjoy it every time the open it. While the typical alphabet book usually bores both adults and kids, A is For Art is the opposite of boring. Indeed, each time I look at a page, I notice something new somewhere and so do my kids. The text, too, is well done. By the end of each paragraph there will be no way your child will not know the sound the illustrated letter makes. While this book is a far cry from a classically illustrated children's book it is just the antidote for the routine.

"A is for Art: An Abstract Alphabet" is a good title for this book. It is not a simple alphabet book. It stimulates the reader/viewer to think, think, and think some more. An incredible amount of thought went into it, too. The Acknowledgements page gives an idea of how tremendously much work went into this book. So does the Index of the sizes, materials and locations of letters. It is a marvel, truly. I went through the book carefully, and found it great therapy. I nearly died from bacterial spinal meningitis, and mental therapy is something I seek. This book was just the thing. I read it page by page, studied the beautiful photographs, and worked out every part. I don't know whether a 4-year-old child would get much from this book at first, but he or she would love the pictures. For going deeper, the companionship of someone more mature would be wonderful. And that is a great way for children to experience books. A is for Art in this abstract alphabet book. It is a journey. I'm sure I will spend more time with it!

At ALA, I discovered Stephen T. Johnson's soon-to-be-released A is for Art: An Abstract Alphabet. No stranger to the alphabet book as a unique medium of expression, Stephen won a Caldecott Honor for his spectacular Alphabet City in 1996. Six years in the making, A is for Art is a monumental achievement. To help illustrate the point, I will admit a false assumption my lazy brain made when I first saw the book: "Oh, how cool! He's exhaustingly searched through thousands of pieces of contemporary art to discover connections with the alphabet." Not quite. It's even more amazing than that. Imagine if a letter had the power to dictate an artist's creation. "X" instructs the artist to use "x-rays and xerographs of xylophones," and, of course, the x-rayed and xerographed xylophone images must themselves form the letter "x." What is so fresh about Stephen's set of alliterated constraints is that they are not restricted to subjects (nouns) alone. Descriptors (adjectives) and action words (verbs) also inform the creation of his pieces. For example, in "Ice Cream Floats," the "imitation" ice cream cones are "individually illuminated, isolated, immobilized, immersed, inverted, identical, and insoluble." In his own words, Stephen had been, "exploring the English dictionary, selectively choosing and organizing particular words from each letter of the alphabet and, based solely on the meanings of the words, developing a visual work of art." Back to my lazy brain. Where I had originally thought that Stephen searched for these alphabet connections in pre-existing art, he, instead, created all of the art pieces after having worked within a set of self-imposed, alphabet-based constraints. The results reveal startling symmetries, that to a casual observer remain hidden. I use "symmetries" in the broadest sense of the word. Stephen's compositions display a harmony and order that invoke an almost mathematical beauty. "Golden Sections" is a painting based on the letter "G" that depicts a visual representation of the "golden ratio" (think nautilus shell chambers). The letter "G" can be clearly discerned as we follow the fractal through several recursions. In its color palette and use of media, "gradations of green, gray, and gold...rendered with gouache, graphite, glitter, granulated gunpowder, and glue," "Golden Sections" creates such a harmonic effect that one better understands Soviet scientist's V. Vernadsky's assertion that "a new element in science is not the revelation of the principle of symmetry, but the revelation of its universal nature." Finally, I must comment upon Stephen's observation that "the self-imposed limitations and restrictive nature of using only words from each letter of the alphabet to generate an original creation have turned out to be truly liberating." As someone who works with constraints myself (I'm currently working on a 32-page picture book that tells a story using only words that begin with the letters "qu"), I am in complete