cover image FOUND ALPHABET

FOUND ALPHABET

Ramon Shindler, Wojciech Graniczewski, , illus. by Anita Andrzejewska and Andrzej Pilichowski-Ragno. . Houghton, $16 (32pp) ISBN 978-0-618-44232-4

Assemblages of tiny found objects—clock innards, matchboxes, pastille tins and wood scraps—suggest machines and animals in this rhyming alphabet, a collaboration by a Krakow quartet. "I" is for igloo, and a riddle ("My dentist thinks it's much too sweet") points out that it's made of sugar cubes. "L" is for lamp, crafted out of a spring and some plastic-coated bits of wire; writers Shindler and Graniczewski joke, "It's on all day and off all night/ As you can see, it's not too bright." Occasionally Andrzejewska and Pilichowski-Ragno's fabrications are prettily composed, like the lanky gray-green giraffe (for "G") with a gear for an eye, or the symmetrical house (the "H" entry) built from a rusty lock-and-key mechanism with golden leaves for its roof. Yet readers may find some of the pictures lacking, like the poor butterfly ("B") created out of two dry rounds of toast and a chunk of cloth-insulated wire, the steel-wool nest ("N") and the drab octopus ("O") made from sesame-seed-encrusted breadsticks. All the found objects lie flat on the solid-color page backgrounds, as if placed there temporarily, and the often facile rhymes unfortunately contribute to the hit-or-miss results. All ages. (May)