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$8.99
Published on Oct 01, 1992 | 32 Pages
Author’s note: The alphabet text for this book comes from a playground game I learned in grammar school in the fifties. The game was played by bouncing a ball, one bounce for each word. And each time a word beginning with the correct letter of the alphabet came up, the player had to put one leg over the ball as it bounced. The object was to think of names and places and things to sell for each letter of the alphabet and not to miss the ball.
The uniqueness of playground games–whether they are clapping games, jump rope rhmes, or ball bouncing games–is that they are taight by one child to another without the more formal instruction that an adult, such as a parent or teacher, would provide. The reason for this is not completely clear since adults in general pass on many children’s songs and rhymes; but perhaps it is as simple as the fact that adults just don’t like to play children’s games. In any case it is clear that many of these playground ditties remain eternal–thirty years after I learned them, my children brought them home to me. Generation after generation, they never seem to leave the world of the child.
The antics never quite quit as a parade of animals sell their wares in this wildly illustrated version of the familiar alphabet ditty and ball-bouncing game. Young readers will delight in meeting such characters as Barbara, the bear with balloons for sale in Brazil; New York Ned, the newt who owns a noodle emporium, and finally the zipper-selling Zambian zebra and zebu, Zelda and Zach.
Illustrator
Steven Kellogg
Steven Kellogg is a beloved author and illustrator who has published more than 100 picture books, including the classics The Mysterious Tadpole, Can I Keep Him?, The Island of the Skog, and Is Your Mama a Llama?, and Pinkerton, Behave!, which was on Horn Book’s and Booklist’s Best of the Year lists and led to four sequels. Kellogg is a winner of the Regina Medal for his lifetime contribution to children’s literature. His books have received numerous accolades, such as being named Reading Rainbow featured selections and winning the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, the Irma Simonton Black Award, the IRA-CBC Children’s Choice Award, and the Parents’ Choice Award.
Learn More about Steven Kellogg