Alpha Beta Chowder

This is the book I read, over and over, at the demand of my language-infatuated seven-year-old. He may not have understood half the words, but he delighted in their sounds. When he tired of the book I put it on my bedside bookstand, and I still pull it out when I'm in the mood for some inspired, sophisticated nonsense. The best ABC book ever.

Although I bought my eight-year-old girl the book for Christmas, it's headed to my office. It is the funniest book I've read in a long time; my usual reading (teaching) matter is the classics. The Steigs' book is a welcome break, a breath of fresh air after all that high-mindedness and tragedy! Carrotina and her awful cadenza are hilarious, but Naomi, "nervy as a newt" with her "nitwit" parents, is all too recognizable. I appreciate the tiny moral tales and the deflating of pompous academics, as in the "exegesis of the sphinx".