A Is for Bee: An Alphabet Book in Translation

by Ellen Heck

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Ellen Heck's picture book debut is a fun romp through the animal alphabet. A is for Bee is an extraordinarily illustrated look at what animals are called around the world. How is it that "F" is for butterfly and "Y" is for porcupine? You'll have to flip through this incredible gift book to see how everything and everyone are interconnected.

BEST OF THE YEAR
The New York Times · Booklist Top of the List · World Kid Lit

What letter does the word bee start with?
If you said “B” you’re right – in English!
But in many, many languages, it actually starts with A.
Bee is Aṅụ̄ in Igbo,
Aamoo in Ojibwe,
Abelha in Portugese.
And Arı in Turkish.

Come and explore the gorgeous variations in the ways we talk about familiar things, unified and illuminated through Ellen Heck’s eye-catching, graphic scratchboard details and hidden letterforms.

P R A I S E

★ “A gorgeous collection for linguists of all ages."
—Booklist (starred)

“The ultimate demonstration of inclusion, and the beauty of world languages. This lavishly illustrated multilingual alphabet book isn’t about inclusion, it is inclusion.”
—The New York Times

"Kaleidoscopic and delightful. Any lover of language, or any child who likes new sounds, will be entranced."
—Kory Stamper, NYT

“Beautiful. A book that presents an understanding far beyond the usual. Marvelous”
—Betsy Bird, SLJ Fuse 8

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781646141272
Publisher:	Levine Querido
Publication date:	06/14/2022
Pages:	40
Sales rank:	373,937
Product dimensions:	8.25(w) x 11.05(h) x 0.45(d)
Age Range:	3 - 9 Years

About the Author

Ellen Heck is a printmaker. For the past decade, through several print projects, she has explored questions about identity—its creation, variability, persistence and change. She studied philosophy at Brown University and art at SAIC. Inspired by reading Lithuanian alphabet books to her son, A Is for Bee is her debut picture book.

Editorial Reviews

[STAR] “A gorgeous collection for linguists of all ages."—Booklist (starred)

“Against richly colored backgrounds, the black-and-white scratchboard illustrations dramatically employ contrast and texture. Hand-lettered display type enhances the visual drama and zestfully celebrates the multiplicity of animal names. Cleverly, each letter is hidden somewhere in the composition of its illustrated page, adding an A-to-Z seek-and-find element for children… Combining visual verve with a sense of our worldwide connectedness, this both teaches and entertains.”—Kirkus Reviews

"Kaleidoscopic and delightful. Any lover of language, or any child who likes new sounds, will be entranced."—Kory Stamper, The New York Times

“An entertainingly subversive take on the usual alphabet book.” — Five Books, Best Books of 2022

Best of the Year, Bank Street College

From the Publisher

2022-03-24
A playful subversion of animal abecedaries.

Heck plumbs 68 non-English languages for 26 animal names that begin with different letters or sounds than their English counterparts. Thus, “G is for Cat” for speakers of Spanish (gato), Ojibwe (gaazhagens), and Korean (goyangi). I is for fish, O for eagle, and S for Lion. Frequent last-place-holder zebra is under V here—“Varikkutirai,” in Tamil. Heck includes languages spanning the globe, including those of several Native American tribes. As she explains in her author’s note, some of the represented languages with non-Roman alphabets or alternate writing systems are transliterated to represent the sounds that speakers make when saying the animal name. Against richly colored backgrounds, the black-and-white scratchboard illustrations dramatically employ contrast and texture. Hand-lettered display type enhances the visual drama and zestfully celebrates the multiplicity of animal names. Cleverly, each letter is hidden somewhere in the composition of its illustrated page, adding an A-to-Z seek-and-find element for children. Readers are also invited to use publisher-supplied links to hear native or fluent speakers pronounce the animal names. An alphabetized index links the languages to their respective letter(s). Cultural or geographical addenda might have further enhanced children’s understanding of this package’s truly global nexus. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Combining visual verve with a sense of our worldwide connectedness, this both teaches and entertains. (Picture book. 4-8)

Kirkus Reviews