Sir Quentin Saxby Blake is an English cartoonist, caricaturist, illustrator and children's writer. He has illustrated over 300 books, including 18 written by Roald Dahl, which are among his most popular works. For his lasting contribution as a children's illustrator he won the biennial international Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2002, the highest recognition available to creators of children's books. From 1999 to 2001, he was the inaugural British Children's Laureate. He is a patron of the Association of Illustrators.
I found this book quite interesting. Simply put it is a picture book with each page devoted to a letter of the alphabet. With each picture and letter (upper case and lower case) is also a humorous rhyme. Blake goes one step further by carefully selecting the ending of each rhyme to rhyme with the next.
This ABC rhyme book in my opinion would make for an excellent resource to introduce the alphabet to the early years. Pages could also be photocopied (no copyright infringements intended) to hang on the walls around the classroom and use to re-cap every so often or where relevant. This would allow for the children to see the letters, pictures and rhymes every day and allowing for them to memorise without any extra effort on their behalf. The large and colourful layout of each page makes this book visually pleasing, especially so for a very young audience.
Silly and fun. Worth checking out from the library when you've got toddlers learning the alphabet. And being Quentin Blake it's clever enough to not bore the adult doing the reading.