Alphabet City (Picture Puffin Books)

This book takes ordinary objects and views them in a new way.

This book is really neat because there is no text, there are only illustrations that show how the alphabet is everywhere around us. It is very creative and it would be neat activity to ask your questions to find where they think the alphabet may be and ask them to name places they can think of

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where they live.

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I love abecedaria and this is beautiful one - and a Caldecott Honor Book to boot! The premise is simple and hardly original: to collect letters of the alphabet hidden within the urban landscape. The Zs of a fire escape, the G of a lamp-post's ornamentation, the N of a bridge's trusswork, the A of a

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sawhorse...

Stephen Johnson's paintings are lovely vignettes of the physical props to urban living: handrails, shadows, light fixtures, brickwork, pipes, windows, brackets, and flagstones. The paintings are realistic without being too photographic and their colour palette conjures urbanity as both grit and mystery. This book has no words - only capital letters.

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I thought that this book was a great way of teaching students the alphabet and architecture.

K-2. Picture book. This book would be great to show students how to recoginze the shapes of letters in everyday life. It may help them to better remember the form of the letter so it comes easier to them to remember what each letter looks like.

This book takes an interesting perspective in presenting a very simple concept. Kids are familiar with the alphabet and the shapes of the letters from an early age. This book displays all the letters of the alphabet as he found them throughout urban settings. Some stand out clearly while others are

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more not as easily recognized. The author explains his book's purpose in a short introduction that gives the reader an even better sense of his accomplishment. I would challenge my fourth-graders to find the letters of the alphabet in their neighborhoods...or out in nature rather than in the city.

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Great for young children to use their minds and visualize what each letter looks like by having the reader find the letter. Really cool book!

This book is an alphabet book where each page is an illustration of one letter. Each letter is shown as you would find it out in an urban environment. For example, the 'A' is found as the end of a barricade post in a construction site.

ELIB 530A – LibraryThing Part B – Beginning Book / Alphabet Book 1
Stephen Johnson’s book gives the reader a glimpse of the depth of visual literacy and perception that a visual artist can experience in the everyday world. The reader must at times stretch their usual subliminal comprehension

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of the visual as a gestalt of contour and positive space to include negative space, shadow and the singular or partial part of the whole. His technique is near photo-realism, but in some of the works in the book he takes liberties with improvised texture and color. This book is an excellent one to use for pure enjoyment and entertainment as well as one for enriching ways of seeing.

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In Alphabet City by Stephen T. Johnson is intended for children 3+ years to adult. This wordless concept book presents the alphabet with a unique perspective. Each letter is found within the construction or design of a building, bridges, gardens, and many other objects found in a city setting. The

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composition and design of this book guides the viewer to … “discover for themselves juxtaposition of scale, harmonies of shadows, rhythms, colorful patterns in surface textures, and joy in the most somber aspects of a city, by transcending the mundane and unearthing its hidden beauty.” (Johnson introduction) so perfectly said by the author and illustrator. His media is pastels, watercolors, gouache and charcoal on hot pressed watercolor paper. His colors are basically earth tones in varying shades with many close up illustrations placed in the center of the page. This draws our eye to that image and one feels the strength from an ordinary object uplifted to a momentarily dignified position. This concept book definitely involves the child and the adult with many questions and many connections between similarities and differences and to truly look carefully “at our urban world at various times of the day, and during the cycle of the seasons.”(intro.)
Nodelman speaks of directed tension between words and illustrations that is necessary to have a good picture book. However wordless books can achieve this same tension through their art alone. Each picture holds a surprise and is part of a story line or a sequence such as the ABC; the young reader expects the next letter, but not in the design of a garden, nor in the handrails of a stairway. Alphabet City is truly like a city, it has much more to see than just our 26 letters. This book would be a wonderful addition to a classroom’s collection of alphabet books. It would stir the young mind to creative thinking as he or she tried to create their own ABC book

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Part Ba/Alphabet Book
Johnson, S. (1995). Alphabet city. New York: Viking.

Alphabet City is a wordless alphabet book. Readers will feel as though they are taking a walk through a city and discovering that the letters of the alphabet are hiding amongst city objects, such as streets, buildings, parks,

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signs, bridges, and the list goes on. This picture book will inspire beginning readers to seek out the alphabet within their own city. All ages.

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Summary: This is a picture book of alphabet letters that are seen in peoples everyday surroundings. Such as the shape of a New York fire escape looking like the letter b.

Personal effect: I enjoyed this book because make you look outside your normal point of view when looking at your normal

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surroundings, you can find more than what you would normally.

Extension: Students could go home and for homework their assignment would be to find ten objects that look like letters and write them down.

Also given random pictures of cities, homes, parks, streets, etc. students must find as many letters as possible.

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Fantastic book for kids to learn about observing the world around them. Encourages them to look for patterns that occur all around them, in this case the urban environment.
Johnson's paintings are very well done, near photographic. I enjoyed the little details that appear in the paintings along side

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the letters.

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In this photography alphabet book, the author uses photos he has taken in a city that make letters! For example, the letter N is seen in a train trestle bridge, rusty and iron. Its a super cool way to see the alphabet all around, very creative, interesting, and clever.

Alphabet City is book that has every letter of the alphabet designed from different things in the city.
This book is an ABC picture book.
I thought this book was really cool. At times it felt like an I Spy book because I really had to look for a while sometimes to see the letter in the picture.
I

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think this is a really fun book for children to read to learn about the alphabet and also the city. Publisher’s Weekly said that the book is an inspection of not only letters but the world. Children can use this book to learn not only about the letters but city life as well.

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The Alphabet City book presents a wonderful architectural view of our letters in the alphabet. This book is age appropriate for the (k-1). There may be challenges in discerning particular letters but with guidance the task may be accomplished. No letters are written within the text.The photographs

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are very crisp with lavish color when possible. This is a terrific approach to review our old friend the alphabet. A follow up lesson would include a review of the book, and then have the children write the letter of random pages selected in the book.

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This book goes through the letters of the alphabet using a variety of city landscape shaped as the letters. This is a wonderful book for students B-2. It allows the students to pick out the actual letter and discuss what the actual shape is as well. The photos in the book are clear in what the

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letter they are trying to show.
*To be used in B-2 for alphabet recognition and teaching children to find the alphabet in a variety of locations.

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3) Caldecott Honor Award

4) Pre-K -2nd

5) Alphabet City is a very interesting alphabet book. The book contains no words but has pictures on each page of real life objects in a city like environment. The purpose of the book is for readers to locate letters of the alphabet in the illustrations. Readers

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must use their observation skills in order to locate the letters.

6) An activity that can be used in the classroom is to have the students form their own letters using any objects in the classroom. students can form small groups and can use blocks, cars, pencils, Popsicle sticks, etc. to make the letters of the alphabet.

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This book is approproate for 1st grade and older. This book received the Caldecott Honor. This book contains normal photos at first glance, but is a rivating collection of photos, each one capturing a letter of the alphabet throughout New York City. Uses in the classroom for this book would be to

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have the children look around and find things within the classroom/homes that take on the shape of some of the letters in the alphabet.

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This book is just a book with nothing but pictures, no words. The pictures in the book are the pictures of the alphabets.

This book is appropriate for the grades pre-k and kindergarten. Each of the letters are represented by using objects seen everyday. For example E is represented by a traffic light and M is represented by a bridge. I think younger children who are just beginning to learn letters will enjoy trying to

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figure out where the letters are in each of the pictures.
Uses in the classroom:
- As I read the book I would have children quietly look at each picture and then have a volunteer say what the letter is and come up to the board and write the letter. Students can get practice writing the letters.
-I would assign the students one letter and with it they have to draw a picture. For example for J I would draw an upside down candy cane. I would then hang the alphabet letters all around the classroom.
- I would ask students to look at the world around them and bring in or draw a picture of something they see that is in the shape of a letter.

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This book has beautiful photographs. The author/illustrator started seeing letters throughout the city in some unusual and some obvious places. The captured the photos of every capital letter of the alphabet. This book would be good to evoke creativity and "thinking outside the box."

A Caldecott honor book that takes you on a journey through the city. This is a wordless book and the illustrations speak by themselves.
It takes the reader to use the imagination and see where in their city they might be able to find a letter of the alphabet. One of my favorite ones are the letter

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E that is a traffic light and the letter y that is the light polls.

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Every page is a letter of the alphabet. There are no words. The letters are seen in the city's street lamps, signs, streets, etc. The pictures are large and are painted. I think it's really beautiful to look at, though it would be fun if the pictures were actual photographs. I think this is a cool

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book for all ages. I think it would be interesting to anyone to see letters of the alphabet hidden in the things you see on a daily basis. For teaching I would probably show this to a kindergarten class. I believe a kindergarten student already know their ABC's but I think this book could show at a basic level how literacy is all around us, even if we don't notice.

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