What's the Name of That Book??? discussion

Sorry in advance, this is going to be near impossible I think!

The book is from late 70's early 80's, was the first book I ever remember reading.

Children's A to Z picture book, A4 size, orange hardback cover with a white spine.

The front cover showed some pictures from inside the book in different size squares, like you would see in a movie from the 1970's like The Andromeda Strain.

Each page had two letters from the alphabet, and each letter was illustrated by a picture.

I remember some of the pictures very clearly, they would be in the style of like a concept artist or illustrator like Ralph McQuarrie or Chris Foss. A lot of the pictures would look like the stylised images you would see at something like a "world's fair" exhibition in the 1970's? I would guess the images were American even though I cannot tell you why I think that.

I remember one picture of farmland where it was flat and you could see tractors for miles. Another picture showed an aquarium with I think hammerhead sharks swimming in it? I know this sounds ridiculous but I still dream of some of the images from this book to this day, so any help would be much appreciated.

What age child is this aimed at? Toddler, 5 yr old, 8 yr old? Does the book have words, or is it just pictures?

You think the images were American; was the book itself American, or British, or something else?

And I notice those two illustrators you mentioned do a lot of sci-fi illustrations; was that the main theme of the images?

Hi Lobstergirl, the book I think was aimed at a 5 year old, as there was text in it and the pictures weren't very cartoony. I think the book was American based on the styles of images in there - the images of farms looked very American, as well as things like aquariums, I think there was a monorail in there too. The images were not really sci-fi, but they did look slightly futuristic in a "World's Fair" kind of a way. I did find one book on eBay last night that looks a bit similar in terms of the illustration style, see this link - http://i.imgur.com/j49L7Mv.png

Something like We Read: A to Z by Donald Crews?

The style of illustration might be similar to Crews' "Ten Black Dots" - http://greenwillowblog.com/wp-content...

Paul, are you still looking for this or did you find it?

Nope, still looking!

Artists and illustrations mentioned by Paul - Ralph McQuarrie and Chris Foss and http://i.imgur.com/j49L7Mv.png

Would you describe the illustrations as realistic, detailed and hand-painted/drawn - more stylized than photographs?

You probably looked through this list of alphabet books already. Too bad the list can't be ordered by publication year though, but that would be a nice listopia feature ...

Kris wrote: "Artists and illustrations mentioned by Paul - Ralph McQuarrie and Chris Foss and http://i.imgur.com/j49L7Mv.png

Would you describe the illustrations as realistic, de..."

I'd say there were realistic, paintings... they were stylised. A lot of the images in there were fascinating to me when I was only 3-4 years of age. Thirty odd years later I find that this style is now called "retrofuturism", which I probably clumsily described in my original post as looking like a "World's Fair" type catalog.

From a google image search, here are some images which I think look similar - the German artist Klaus Bürgle.

http://weburbanist.com/wp-content/upl...

http://www.retro-futurismus.de/buergl...

http://www.retro-futurismus.de/buergl...

http://www.retro-futurismus.de/buergl...

http://www.retro-futurismus.de/buergl...

http://www.retro-futurismus.de/buergl...

http://www.retro-futurismus.de/buergl...

Oswald Voh

http://www.retro-futurismus.de/voh_sc...

Still looking now?

No response, moving to Abandoned folder.

Paul (OP) was last active on the site in May 2019.