Rebecca Reads

My son is only 26 months old, but he’s beginning to learn at the speed of light (from my perspective). After twenty minutes of a Sesame Street “two” episode, for example, he knows he has two hands, two eyes, two feet, and that there are two apples, two spoons, and two bowls on the table. [...]

I admit: The Dangerous Alphabet by Neil Gaiman is the first Neil Gaiman book I’ve read. And it is a clever one. While it’s clearly a children’s book, it has an element of spookiness to it and somber, spidery illustrations that make it just right for adults too.

In medieval children’s primers, the alphabet was the main tool of learning and was often portrayed in a way that also taught religion (Seth Lerer, Children’s Literature, page 61). Poems and teachings would be in the order of the alphabet. This had biblical precedence, as the 22 stanzas of Psalm 118 “use the twenty-two letters [...]