Tigers and Sails and ABC Tales

My son loves this book. He likes the way that it reads and he also just enjoys looking at the artwork. It is a good combination of learning letters while exposing kids to fine art.

Although I rarely find an ABC book I find satisfactory, this one was worse than most as an introduction to the alphabet. "A is for artist" is not a good introduction for the letter A as "ar" is a relatively advanced sound for a beginning reader. "I is for island" has not only the long i but also a silent s; this is most confusing for a young child. It is much better to use the short vowel sounds for the vowels and the hard c and g sounds in an ABC book used as an introduction to the alphabet for a young child. Thus I will not be using this book as ABC book; I will use it as a art book for my young son. Fortunately it should seve that purpose quite well as the pictures are indeed lovely and quite varied. If I were rating it only as an art book for young children, it would have 5 stars. Truly I look forward to sharing it with him this summer and using it as means of developing his verbal language skills. I just wish I could use it as an ABC book as well without reservation.

(...)! I am a parent and have a large family. I am also very well educated and not a librarian! I can only say that the friends to whom I have lent this book say that their children love the text and are captivated by the quality and content of the reproductions. I would like to know why all children's books must have the same idiotic cant? It's as if there is a huge children's book factory out there that pumps out insipid books that have the same monotonous rhymes. Change is scary to librarians and especially to parents. I say buy this book and challenge your child to learn something scholarly, new and different.

Tigers and Sails and ABC Tales is an excellent book forintroducing young children to a variety of art and artistswhile they practice their ABCs. Each of the pieces featuredin the book was donated to the Virginia Museum of Fine Artsby Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon. The artists range from Renoirto Cézanne, and from Homer to Picasso. The book comes with an accompanying video, in which avariety of children read the text of the book while viewingboth the paintings featured in the book as well as somelovely bonus paintings. The children are enthusiastic andadorable, although sometimes a little hard to understand. Particularly enjoyable was the variation on the ABC song.For all the parents out there who are tired of the same oldtune playing over and over again in their heads, this one iscatchy and fun, and does not cause children to believe thatthere is a letter called LMNOP.