Lucy & Tom: From A to Z

Lucy and Tome

by Shirley Hughes

Lucy and Tom know a lot of words: they have Books read to them at Bedtime. They know that D is for Dog, like the dogs that live on their street, F is for Friends, and P is for Park and for Playing.

Join Lucy and Tom on a journey through their life, in this satisfying alphabet tale from master storyteller, Shirley Hughes.

Genres: Picture Books, Childrens

32 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1984

About the author

Shirley Hughes is the illustrator of more than two hundred children’s books and has won many prestigious awards, including the Kate Greenaway Medal twice. She is the author-illustrator of DON'T WANT TO GO! and OLLY AND ME 1 2 3. She died at her home in London on the 25th of February, 2022.

Reviews

[Jenna Mills]

Lovely

[Savio Sebastian]

A good way to go through the alphabets and introduce your toddler to different words that begin with that letter and a good storyline to accompany it.

[Vincent Meyers]

"Lucy and Tom's ABC" by Shirley Hughes is a story that introduces the letters of the alphabet and tells the experiences Lucy and Tom encounter together representing each letter. The story begins with Lucy and Tom discussing all of the words they know starting with the letter "A". Specifically, some of the words they know that start with this letter include ants, apples, and airplanes. As the story continues, Lucy and Tom go through the letters B-Z stating any word they know beginning with that letter. Lastly, the story ends with Lucy and Tom's trip to the zoo, and this represents the final letter of the alphabet.

The illustrations in this story are very elegantly and intricately designed. Unlike the illustrations in many children's books, these images are very realistic, and this is a feature that I personally enjoy. To me, the realistic images seem like a subconscious trigger for the readers to perceive the characters in this story as role models who should be emulated. With this being said, the illustrations definitely represent the text very well. For example on page 3, the author is discussing the letter "C". On this page, the author talks about cats and crayons while the illustration displays Tom & Lucy playing with their cat and many of their crayons scattered at the bottom of the page. Along with the intricate details, the illustrator uses a lively color scheme with red, light blue, bright green, and yellow to capture the reader’s attention. Furthermore, I like how the author creatively changes the font in this book to emphasize different points. For example, each page has the next sequential alphabet letter bolded and in a font size about four times bigger than the rest of the text. This draws the reader’s focus on the letter as the theme for each page. More specifically, I like how on the page for letter “V”, the author varies the font size depending on what specific tone of voice the author is trying to convey. When the author talks about the letter “V” and the children are whispering, the font is made very tiny to symbolize a quiet voice. However, when the children are being loud, the author makes the font in all capital letters to symbolize a big and loud voice.

Finally, I would highly recommend this book to elementary students because it can be used as an effective educational tool. This story is designed very uniquely because of the specific A-Z order it follows. Not only can children learn the alphabet from this story, but they can also learn more about writing. For example, each letter of the alphabet is showcased both as the capital letter and the lower case letter. In addition, this book is helpful to young children because it challenges them to think critically to come up with their own, different words that start with the same letter of the alphabet as they read. Thus, due to this story’s educational features, I feel this story would be very beneficial for children to read.

[Stephanie Messina]

This book is all about the abc’s but it does more than just list them. This book uses the abc’s to tell the life story of two kids named Lucy and Tom. Each letter stands for something that is somehow a part of their life and after that letter and word have been shown it explains how that word or thing affects their life. One example of this is “G is for Granny and Grandpa, two very important people”. It then goes on to talk about the things that they do with their granny and grandpa. This happens all the way until the end of the alphabet where it stops at the letter Z.

I would say that this is a high quality picture book. I say that because there are a lot of different pictures that go along with the text and they are also all different colors. This book will also be relatable to children because most of the things that are described about Tom and Lucy’s life are basic things that most children do or have so they will be even more interested in reading it. There is quite a bit of text which I think could be cut down but there also aren’t any difficult words that would cause the children trouble so I think that they could handle it and the text is really telling a story. All of the different pictures are very pleasing to the eye and the letters are bold and larger than the other words so that the children can still understand that they’re doing their abc’s. Overall I really liked this book and would recommend it to children.