Once Upon an Alphabet: Short Stories for All the Letters

A cup character falls and breaks into many pieces. Many pages later it's seen being glued back together and later is in pieces again but with a dialogue bubble. A daredevil laughs in the face of Death, a classic grim reaper who's mildly scary. A large monster, also mildly scary, stands next to a frightened man; the next page shows a few of the man's things fallen over, and it's clear the monster ate him. A kid and his pet frog become an old man and a skeleton. A character gets locked out and spends the night outside looking frightened and sad. A figure falls from a tall cliff into the sea because she rolled out of bed the wrong way. A man burns down a bridge to keep his neighbor from annoying him.

Parents need to know that Once Upon an Alphabet by Oliver Jeffers (The Day the Crayons Quit) is a humorous, sometimes absurd collection of very short stories illustrating each letter of the alphabet. The letter examples themselves look hand-drawn and some are based on cursive writing (such as the capital "G" and the lowercase "l"), so early alphabet learners may be confused by letters that look different from what they're used to. Vocabulary is advanced, and kids may need help with meanings that aren't illustrated or are very subtly illustrated. Mildly scary or violent illustrations show a large monster, the grim reaper, a woman falling from a cliff, and the skeleton of a pet frog. Some situations, such as being locked out of the house at night, aren't resolved.