Babar's ABC

"Alexander aims his arrow at the apple. A bear reads a book in bed. Celeste wears her crown when she drives her car." From A to Z ("Zephir zips up his sleeping bag zipper"), Babar takes young readers on a trip through the alphabet. Based on the tremendously popular Babar series from Jean de Brunhoff and, later, his son Laurent de Brunhoff, Babar's ABC enlists the help of such beloved characters as Arthur, Cornelius, Pom, and Celeste to guide children on a learning-to-read adventure. Large colored letters, in both upper- and lowercase letters show up bold and bright at the top of each page, with a word that starts with the featured letter just underneath. "Ee," for example, stands for elephant. The full-page illustration below is packed with elephants playing, wrestling, swimming, and walking. An inset picture shows a bunch of bunnies with the caption, "White rabbits have long pink ears and little pink eyes." Fans of the classic The Story of Babar, the Little Elephant will be delighted by the endpapers, which show, instead of the familiar string of elephants zigzagging across the spread, a progression of elephants carting each awkwardly large letter of the alphabet, with the last elephant finally stumbling under the weight of X, Y, and Z. (Ages 3 to 6) --Emilie Coulter