Alphabet of Alphabets, by Allan Sanders

I love this book!!! Probably more than my kids do. I’m pretty sure I’ve already found a book that will feature heavily this Christmas.

The main reason is that it can be enjoyed by kids of various ages. For the over 8yr olds, it is a fun look-and-find with hundreds of items to search for. For the 5-7 yr olds, it is a great way to build reading vocabulary. And for the under 4 yr olds, it is a super fun book to look at to see what they recognise. I even managed to get my 18month old (who is notoriously reluctant to sit and listen to a new book) to look at some of the pictures and find things he knows the name of, ie vehicles.

The pictures in this the book are really well done. Some of the pages are set up like a traditional look-and-find where there is a list of things you need to find in the large central picture. Others are scenes in which you need to find an alphabet of items. I don’t know about other parents, but I just can’t do ‘Where’s Wally?’ anymore, it hurts my eyes too much. The pictures in this book are big enough to ensure grown-ups can stay involved in the searching. They are also interesting and amusing and make for a super fun book session with multiple kids.

I feel like this is big praise for a book that fits into a category that I would often rather ignore – alphabet books. Lately, I kind of skip over that flooded genre as I’m pretty good at my letters now. If you are the same, make an exception for this book.

Alphabet of Alphabets is part of the ‘Wide Eyed Editions’ range of non-fiction books published by QuartoKnows. We have had a few now and they really impress me. We have so far also tried out:

All of these books have one thing in common: they are just so nice to hold, open and turn the pages of. The quality of the publishing is outstanding (almost too good for children’s books). ‘The Hello Atlas‘ was especially impressive as it had dozens of flaps to lift.

But what I truly love is the way these non-fiction books open up the world to our family in a way that crosses developmental stages and wants us to come back again and again to see what we might have missed.