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Summary
Summary
A is for Art: An Abstract Alphabet is a remarkable journey of discovery about art and language through painting, collage, and sculpture by Caldecott Honor artist Stephen T. Johnson. With literal renderings of each letter, complete with witty titles and playful, alliterative captions, Johnson's abstract art forges connections between words, objects, and ideas.
Can you find the hidden letters? Look closely and you will see a letter C made of colorful candy, a letter H hidden in a hook, and an S in a soft shadow. From A to Z, each stunning, original work of art will stimulate the imagination and creativity of children and adults alike.
Author Notes
Stephen T. Johnson is the creator of such well-known children's books as My Little Red Toolbox , My Little Blue Robot , and Alphabet City , recipient of a Caldecott Honor, a New York Times Best Illustrated Book of the Year, and a Society of Illustrators Gold Medal. His artwork can be found in permanent and public collections including the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, and the DeKalb Avenue Subway Station in Brooklyn, New York. Stephen is a professor at the University of Kansas, and he lives in Lawrence, Kansas.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Baby Einstein grads seeking their first coffee-table book might savor this abecedary, which pays homage to abstract expressionism and pop art. Johnson (Alphabet City) creates a multimedia artwork for each letter and describes it with a lengthy alliterative caption. Letter C's Camouflage consists of countless colorful candies in a clear circular container. In H's Hoopla, an installation of silvery-blue hula hoops hangs from an industrial ceiling, while M's Meditation on the Memory of a Princess references fairy tales with eight stacked magenta mattresses and a mini mauve marble. Connoisseurs will detect allusions to Rauschenberg, Lichtenstein and Motherwell; details of the pieces sometimes become microscopic on the pages, but a dust-jacket photo of Johnson in his studio confirms this project's impressive scope. Unfortunately, salient associations can be lost in transition to page with the reduction of scale. Crisp white backgrounds reinforce the book's resemblance to an exhibition catalogue, as does a disconcertingly lofty foreword where Johnson explains, I took ordinary objects and made them unfamiliar, removing functionality in order to reveal their potential metaphorical associations. The apparatus may not enhance the ABC game, but opens the book to an adult audience. Ages 5-9. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved All rights reserved.
New York Review of Books Review
From left, the arch "Dangerous Alphabet"; the architectural "ABC3D"; abstract expressions in "A Is for Art"; and color aplenty in "A Child's Day." IF only life were as tidy as an alphabet book. Children, like many adults, crave predictability and structure, and alphabet books generally deliver. The format provides a framework where none exists - random facts about trains become "All Aboard ABC" - or the setting for a simple story, like the classic "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom." But don't assume all alphabet books are for learning letters or sorting aardvarks, bunnies and cats. They can be avant-garde or even grim. "The Dangerous Alphabet," by Neil Gaiman, renowned for his high-art graphic novel series "The Sandman" is a puzzler - funny, frightening and confusing all at once. Note the plot summary on the book flap: "Two children, treasure map in hand, and their pet gazelle sneak past their father, out of their house and into a world beneath the city where monsters and pirates roam." Oh. The trippy story, illustrated by the aptly pen-named Gris Grimly, is difficult to follow. The premise that the children are searching for treasure is suggested by a small parchment in the spread for the letter A. The girl is kidnapped at the letter E, dragged around what appears to be a gruesome fantasy version of Victorian-era London and frightened by myriad tortures being inflicted on other children from letters F through V. (For example, freshly baked pies, with bones sticking out, accompany the bouncy line "O is for Ovens, far under the street") The girl's brother chases after her, wielding a wooden dagger, gazelle in tow. He triumphs by X, and they return safely to their oblivious dad at Z. The characters - a parade of hollow-eyed children, villains in ragged suits and misshapen, toothy beasts - are difficult to keep track of in the full-spread scenes crowded with ghoulish figures, all rendered with great detail and humor in fine-line ink and washed-out watercolors. Among the skulls, knives and chains, Grimly hides familiar objects and animals that start with the appropriate letter on each page, a challenging treasure hunt for the reader. Gaiman's rhyming verse is a cheeky alphabetical list loosely describing die children's journey, but the humor seems better aimed at older kids than the publisher's recommended "5 and up." Call me a goody-two-shoes, but I won't be reading the words "Q is for Quiet (bar one muffled scream)" to my kindergartner anytime soon. A deceptively simple yet sophisticated idea animates "ABC3D," by the French graphic designer Marion Bataille. Her small, chunky pop-up book has no content save for the letters themselves, but I wanted to read it again and again. A lenticular cover (like a hologram) reveals the title one character at a time, with B doubling as 3. Inside, A and H jump off their pages in hollow, boxy 3-D forms. C flips over as the page opens to become the rounded part of a D. The letters O and P, sharing a page, become Q and R when the reader folds over a translucent overlay adding the tails. U is the most impressive: tiny strips of white paper fan out above a black backing like some perfect parabola, stacking gradually around and upward at the same time. Bataille's colors are bold and simple. Each capital letter is rendered in white, black or red, and appears against a solid white or black background. As a design piece, the book is both elegant and clever. FOR a magnificent medley of works produced over many years, some on a huge scale, read Stephen T. Johnson's "A Is for Art : An Abstract Alphabet," one of this year's winners of a New York Times Best Illustrated Children's Books Award. Johnson has works in prominent collections, and New Yorkers may know his 66-foot mural in the DeKalb Avenue subway station. In the author's note he explains this project: "For the past six years I have been exploring the English dictionary, selectively choosing and organizing particular words from each letter of the alphabet and, based solely on the meanings of the words, developing a visual work of art. I took ordinary objects and made them unfamiliar, removing functionality in order to reveal their potential metaphorical associations, which can lead in turn to overlapping and sometimes paradoxical meanings." The art is also just plain fun to look at. The colors and materials are eye-popping, and Johnson hides a letter in each of the 26 pieces. One work, "Dotty Diptych," is made of nearly 2,700 white and black dominoes; dots in the right-hand panel of white dominoes form a tricky letter D. This is a grown-up's alphabet, but for children it is also a whimsical introduction to the realm of abstract art. Ida Pearle's debut picture book, "A Child's Day: An Alphabet of Play," is a colorful ode to the world of young children. The text - single, whimsical verbs like "act," "kick," "yell" - feels fresh. Only "X marks the spot," a disappointing standby that also appears in Caiman's text, falls flat. (And therein lies the tradeoff when adopting the nifty A-B-C format: authors can't skip any letters, even when they have nothing to say.) Pearle must have logged a lot of playground hours observing children. She creates a diverse cast in every skin tone, intricately illustrated in cut-paper collages. No features are drawn into the faces, and the collages are shadowless; the loving details lie in the children's silhouettes, head tilts and gestures (an arm kept shyly behind a girl's back as she feeds a cat). The children wear exquisite geometric patterns in stylish shapes and colors. For Q ("quack"), a girl duck-walks in bright green Wellingtons and a purple jumper with a pattern of white dots. Her hair is a long brown braid clipped above her ear, visible only because the layered cut-outs provide a subtle three-dimensional effect Pearle's gallery of unique hairstyles (braids, curls, ponytails and bobs of every shade and texture) is my favorite part of the book. "A Child's Day" hardly belongs on the same shelf as Neil Gaiman's book, but the alphabet format works for both. Stephen T. Johnson's alliterated text and innovative art have an adult-level complexity, and the alphabet also provides a foothold for young readers. Bataille's book, with its universal appeal, is more about style and paper engineering than it is about the alphabet itself. For Bataille, the letters provide a familiar - and marketable - angle for what is really an interactive work of art. Becca Zerkin, a former New York City public school teacher, writes frequently about children's books.
School Library Journal Review
Gr 3 Up-This exciting alphabetic compendium began with a dictionary. Following years of study and work as a realistic painter, Johnson found himself wanting to explore abstract art. He started by collecting words for each letter of the alphabet. Then, he created a piece based on their meanings. For example, the caption for Dotty Diptych reads "Densely distributed dominoes, divided by dark and light dots on dual panels, disappear under drips of dramatically dashed paint dribbling downwards." Inside the white border of the page is the vivid reproduction of two wooden panels covered in dominoes. As with each of the 26 works of art, there is more to be discovered. Here, yellow and white paint covers some of the dominoes, transforming everyday game pieces into dimpled bricks. Also, Johnson has hidden a letter of the alphabet in most of his creations. The works vary from paintings and collages to sculptures to installations, and an index reveals the locations of the hidden letters as well as dimensions and materials for the pieces. Children will enjoy seeing everyday objects like candy used in his creations, and will no doubt be inspired to come up with some abstract art of their own. This book may easily spark discussions about what can be used to make art and who decides what it is. In an author's note, Johnson shares his thoughts on this matter. For more inspiration, see Joyce Raimondo's What's the Big Idea? Activities and Adventures in Abstract Art (Watson-Guptill, 2008).-Lisa Glasscock, Columbine Public Library, Littleton, CO (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Johnson laces an exhilarating visual exploration of 20th-century art history with alliterative A-to-Z wordplay. The 26 paintings and sculptures, some gallery-sized in scope, cleverly combine specific objects, letterforms and even paint hues--all with names beginning with the illustrated letter. T's double spread, the three-paneled painting "Triptych," features "[t]hick-textured titanium paint" and "[t]en teal blue thumbprints" and includes tracing paper and tape--a "tiny three-dimensional toy to tease out trains of thought." The mix of media, visual problem-solving and stylistic derivations (Stuart Davis, Motherwell, de Kooning and others are invoked) make this a terrific springboard for student art extensions. Each composition usually sports the inclusion of the spread's featured letter, with occasional, rather fey textual allusions to "misplaced" letters: "(The omitted letter O occupies the upper left on the opposite page.)" A poignant author's note invites readers to contemplate two disparate art pieces from Johnson's youth, and a visual "index" reveals media, dimensions and a hidden letter key for each piece. Enigmatic and absorbing. (Informational picture book. 6-12) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
