A fashionable boxy cat in a green gardening hat leads readers through the alphabet in this stylish primer.
"Amazing!" cries a blue mouse with a pink tummy, sliding down the side of a tomato-red capital A in Museo type (which, appropriately, flaunts a bit of a tail at the ends of each letter). "A big square/ cat is.../ digging in the dirt!" the mouse continues. The "b," "c" and "d" at the start of each line appear as large red lower-case letters. The mouse, upon learning that the cat is gardening, exclaims "Hooray!" while swinging by its tail from the capital H's handy crossbar. The humor of Schoonmaker's comedy arises from her narrative timing and the visual contrast between the mouse's exuberance ("Do you grow spinach? It's my favorite") and the cat's deadpan expressions ("Ick! I grow all vegetables, but I don't like spinach"). With the mere tilt in the line of the eyebrow or mouth, the cat says it all. (Meanwhile, the mouse juggles spinach leaves.) Readers learn that the mouse is afraid of porcupines, and the cat's name is Eula. The mouse overcomes its fear of the porcupine long enough, however, to unite in urging Eula to try spinach. Will she like it? (Hint: the answer is tied to the word for Z.)
Schnoomaker's deceptively simple compositions make great use of white space, keeping the emphasis on the unlikely friends and the bright red letters that lead children through the alphabet. A funny, surprising twist on a concept book. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness