Children's books: Alphabet and more: "The Little i Who Lost His Dot", "The Day Punctuation Came to Town", "The Mighty Silent e!", and "Red Rover, Red Rover, Send a Vowel Over"

The Little i Who Lost His Dot by Kimberlee Gard, illustrated by Sandie Sonke (Familius)
The Day Punctuation Came to Town by Kimberlee Gard, illustrated by Sandie Sonke (Familius)
The Mighty Silent e! by Kimberlee Gard, illustrated by Sandie Sonke (Familius)
Red Rover, Red Rover, Send a Vowel Over by Kimberlee Gard, illustrated by Sandie Sonke (Familius)

In The Little i Who Lost His Dot, a twist on a classic alphabet book, Little i goes off to school...only to find that he's lost his dot! His classmates are ready to leap in and provide solutions: Little a finds an acorn to use as a dot, Little l suggests a light bulb...but nothing seems quite right. What is a lowercase letter to do?

The illustrations are simple but colorful, letting the alphabet letters be the stars of the show. I also really like that there's more story here than just the alphabet—there's a whole alphabet school where little letters learn to make words, and alphabet parents—and that the things the other little letters suggest are largely a departure from things seen in many alphabet books.

Overall, a cute and useful read for little ones who are making it out of ABC and into abc.

There are some new kids in town—what should the alphabet make of them‽ The Day Punctuation Came to Town, the next book of the series, sets out to answer just that...

Now, I don't know how little kids feel about books about punctuation, but I'm all for them. This book keeps it simple: period, comma, exclamation mark, question mark (silent apostrophe hovering about on occasion). You won't see dashes or interrobangs or ellipses; you won't see colons or semicolons (or parentheses). I'd love to have those addressed in a book for slightly more advanced readers. But the playful way these stories play out reminds me of the Schoolhouse Rock videos I sometimes watched in class when I was little, and that can only ever be a good thing. This won't give an early reader a perfect understanding of punctuation, but the characters are distinct/memorable enough to be helpful to kids who are just shaky on the idea of punctuation in general.

Meanwhile, in The Mighty Silent e!, Little e feels a little left out sometimes...but mostly he doesn't mind being on the outskirts. He knows that someday it'll be his turn to shine—and when words that require a silent "e" crop up in class, it's his time to shine.

The Mighty Silent e! (which I may have mentally retitled as The Silent e Saves the Day) introduces early readers to the idea that English requires (you guessed it) a silent "e" in some words to make the word sound right. (Or: som words hav an "e" becaus otherwis they don't mak sens...) Readers might not understand why the word works this way, but the illustrations will give them a chance to practice sounding out words with and without that dastardly—excuse me, heroic—e and maybe come up with some words of their own that might work this way. (Would be a great read for any Kates, Nates, Janes...)

Colorful illustrations personify the letters in a super cute way and might help reluctant learners to feel a little more invested in the plight of the silent e.

In Red Rover, Red Rover, Send a Vowel Over, the classroom vowels aren't quite sure where they fit in...though Little a is a little disgruntled that she's always asked to go first. But a quick game (or rather, reinvention) of Red Rover fixes all that—because you can't do much without vowels!

(Just for fun: n Rd Rvr, Rd Rvr, Snd Vwl v, th clssrm vwls rn't qt sr whr thy ft n...thgh Lttl s lttl dsgrntld tht sh's lwys skd t g frst. Bt qck gm (r rthr, rnvntn) f Rd Rvr fxs ll tht—bcs y cn't d mch wtht vwls!)

Like the other books in this series, this is a very introductory look at a part of language, but I can see it helping early readers remember what's a consonant and what's a vowel...and what one special letter can be either. (I'm glad the book mentions that, because when I saw Little y playing with the consonants I was a little concerned that y would be written off as only a consonant!) A worthy addition to the collection.

Thanks to the authors and publisher for providing review copies through NetGalley.