If there’s anything my three-year-old son loves more than the alphabet (seriously, he’s an ABCs addict), it would have to be cars and trucks. So you can imagine his exuberance at the sight of Maria van Lieshout’s clever new picture book, Backseat A-B-See. It’s the alphabet in road signs. The alphabet. In road signs. Genius.
The art is striking: a black-and-white road background offsets the bright yellow, green, red, and blue of the street signs. A is for Airport, B is for Bike Route, F is for Fire Station, and so on down the line. “Q is for Quack” — the sign shows a duck crossing — never fails to elicit a chuckle from my young motorist. The sweet opening and closing pages show a child in the backseat of a yellow car, wide-eyed and watchful at the beginning of the trip, and contentedly snoozing at the end. Because when it come to road trips, Z is for Zzzzz, of course.
I keep a running list of picture books that make great birthday gifts for kids of certain ages—Nursery Rhyme Comics is a recent favorite—and after a spin through Backseat A-B-See, I’m parking it the slot reserved for two- to five-year-old vehicle lovers, right next to Sherri Duskey Rinker and Tom Lichtenheld’s wonderful Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site. Vroom!
Here’s a peek at the book trailer:
Review copy received from publisher.
