Having small children, I feel as if I’m swimming in the alphabet most days. By the time we had taught kid one how to learn to read and write the alphabet, it was time to begin teaching kid two. In fact, when I’m rocking my son to sleep each night, I always sing the alphabet to him. As a side note, did you ever notice that Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star and the alphabet are the same tune with different words?
Of course, as writers, our job is to take that alphabet and corral those twenty-six letters into the proper sequence to build our stories. Without the alphabet, there would be no way to pass on our stories other than the spoken word.
I’ve come across some cool alphabet related “stuff” recently. First is this awesome song by the band Barenaked Ladies titled Crazy ABCs. We’ve heard this on XM Radio and got a big kick out of it. I couldn’t find video of BNL singing the song, so here’s a video of a couple kids performing it. I think they did a pretty good job if it.
And just today, on “The Big Idea” on John Scalzi’s blog AlphaOops! H is for Halloween by Althea Kontis. Here’s a synopsis from Barnes and Noble:
H gets top billing — but a stubborn B has something scary to say — as the inside-out alphabet gives a howl-arious Halloween performance.
Ack! It’s time for the show, and A isn’t ready. But then again, Halloween can only start with one letter, no matter how the A-B-Cs normally go! The misbehaving alphabet is back, and there’s no telling who will take the stage next. Z for zombie? P for pirate? Will X think of something good in time? Neon-bright, comically detailed illustrations show a cacophony of costumed letters, each with a mind and personality all its own. Along the bottom, tiny pumpkins arrange the players in proper order, making this alphabet story letter-perfect for Halloween.
I haven’t read this one yet, but to read more about how the author came up with the idea for the book, head over to John Scalzi’s blog.
The Struggling Writer 