There's a Monster in the Alphabet - Hardcover

Master storyteller James Rumford combines his love for art and history in his picture books. Each of his books is vastly different in its content, design, and illustrations but one aspect remains constant throughout his work: his passion about his subjects. Rumford, a resident of Hawaii, has studied more than a dozen languages and worked in the Peace Corps, where he traveled to Africa, Asia, and Afghanistan. He draws from these experiences and the history of his subject when he is working on a book. His book Sequoyah: The Cherokee Man Who Gave His People Writing was a 2005 Sibert Honor winner.

Grade 3-6-Recent discoveries in Egypt indicate that the letters of our alphabet might have originally been pictures, possibly put in an order that told a story. Using his imagination, Rumford retells the myth of Cadmus, the Phoenician hero who brought the alphabet to Greece. "A" was a picture of an ox, and Rumford's story starts with Cadmus in Greece, where he is told "If you seek your fortune, follow an ox with moon-shaped marks." The illustration shows a letter "A" placed upside-down on the ox's face to indicate how the picture might have come to be. The mixed-media illustrations, inspired by ancient Greek art, are in tones of rusty orange, black, and purple. The dramatic scenes take up each spread, with a few lines of text telling the story across the bottom, and a few explanatory notes at the top. The story is exciting on its own, but readers will enjoy the added layer of the alphabet's story. Rumford gives no details about how much of the story is his own elaboration, and readers will find their curiosity only tickled by his endnotes, which explain how much is still unknown about our alphabet. A chart compares the English, Phoenician, Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic alphabets, and allows readers to decode the phrases Rumford placed into his illustration-in Phoenician. Artful design, dramatic execution, and attention to detail mark this complicated but thoroughly enjoyable book. Like Rumford's Traveling Man: The Journey of Ibn Battuta 1325-1354 (Houghton, 2001), this is a title for readers intrigued by the ancient past and its connection to our lives today.
Nina Lindsay, Oakland Public Library, CA
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.