AB(zero)C: A Low-Carbon Footprint Alphabet

by Randi Hacker, Mary Camille Connolly (Illustrator)

AB(zero)C is an alphabet book that gives children information, courage and hope. Each rhyming verse embodies a concept that can open discussion between parent and child about what is happening, how we will face it and ways we can live on our wounded planet without wounding it further. The water color illustrations are by Mary Camille Connolly.

32 pages, Paperback

Published April 22, 2022

About the author

Randi Hacker is the Education Outreach Coordinator at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas, a job that is a synthesis of many of the other career tracks she has followed in her life: educator, editor, author, student of Chinese. Randi earned her BA in English Literature from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and spent the better part of her thirties working as the editor of The Electric Company Magazine published by Children's Television Workshop.

Before completing an MA in Teaching English as a Second Language from St. Michael's College in Winooski, Vermont, she dropped out of quite a number of well-respected graduate schools including the University of Michigan, UCLA and Columbia University in New York City.

In addition to her duties as Outreach Coordinator, Randi is the mother of a 12-year-old daughter adopted from China. Her Vermont-based sitcom "Windy Acres" was broadcast on Vermont Public Television and won a Boston/New England Emmy for Outstanding Entertainment Program. Her young adult novel, Life as I Knew It (Simon & Schuster, 2006) was chosen as one of the New York Public Library's Books for the Teen Age 2007. She is currently at work on her second YA novel.

Reviews

[Marilyn Wolpin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Randi Hacker’s latest offering is a delightful rhyming interactive instruction manual on how children can reduce their carbon footprint and help save planet Earth. This ABC-primer includes some amusing rhyme choices (oughta/water), internal rhymes, the admission that it isn’t always easy to find a rhyme or concept for X, and chances for the reader to interact with the book. The watercolor artwork by Mary Camille Connolly is bright, inviting and refreshing and one particular artistic choice – an iconic scene from an I Love Lucy episode (instead of, say, a cartoon) – is especially amusing to this older reader. Recommended for all the ecologically minded children (and adults) out there – which oughta be all of them.