Eating the Alphabet

Lois Ehlert is one of the authors that I frequently notice when I am reading resources about emergent literacy, so I wanted to look for her books at our public library. One of them was Eating the Alphabet: Fruits & Vegetables from A to Z.

The end papers have small images of various fruits and vegetables in neatly arranged rows, while the title page has a silly face made out of fruits and vegetables, a sure hook for young kids.

After the following introduction on the first page, "Apple to Zucchini, come take a look. Start eating your way through this alphabet book," the rest of the book features fruits and vegetable words letter by letter, along with colorful watercolor illustrations. Each fruit and vegetable name is written twice, once in all capitals and again in all lower case letters.

Though there are many everyday fruits and vegetables, there are others that are less common, such as: gooseberry, kumquat, quince, and radicchio. Of course, what seems everyday or rare for me could be the opposite for others. Some that are common to me now, such as jicama and mango, were an everyday aspect of my husband's childhood and unknown to me until I was an adult. I love that a book like this can open up conversations with the girls about differences in their parents' childhoods. In a school context, kids could talk about which foods they are familiar with. In addition, I love that the end of the book has a glossary of the fruits and vegetables in the book, providing details about those that had me wondering.

This book has a lot to offer. The use of capitals and lower case can help students become aware of letter counterparts, noticing the connections of different ways to write the same letter. In addition, the book would be a perfect fit for a food themed unit. I especially like that the focus was narrowed to fruits and vegetables, so it could also fit in with a health related unit, rather than just food in general. When my oldest was first born I received Ehlert's Growing Vegetable Soup, which would be a great book to pair up with Eating the Alphabet for food-related units.