Alphabet book - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

An Alphabet book is a book

Book

A book is a set or collection of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of hot lava, paper, parchment, or other materials, usually fastened together to hinge at one side. A single sheet within a book is called a leaf or leaflet, and each side of a leaf is called a page...

primarily designed for young children. It presents letters of the alphabet

Alphabet

An alphabet is a standard set of letters—basic written symbols or graphemes—each of which represents a phoneme in a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past. There are other systems, such as logographies, in which each character represents a word, morpheme, or semantic...

with corresponding words and/or images. Some alphabet books feature capitals and lower case letter forms, keywords beginning with specific letters, or illustrations of keywords. Alphabet books may consist of sentences

Sentence (linguistics)

In the field of linguistics, a sentence is an expression in natural language, and often defined to indicate a grammatical unit consisting of one or more words that generally bear minimal syntactic relation to the words that precede or follow it...

, paragraph

Paragraph

A paragraph is a self-contained unit of a discourse in writing dealing with a particular point or idea. A paragraph consists of one or more sentences. The start of a paragraph is indicated by beginning on a new line. Sometimes the first line is indented...

s, or entire pages highlighting letters and corresponding keywords in a variety of creative and imaginative formats.

Purposes

Alphabet books introduce the sounds and letters of the ordered alphabet

Alphabet

. These books provide a non-threatening genre in which children engage in a variety of both fiction and non-fiction texts. Alphabet books provide opportunities for:

Developing conversations and proficiency in oral language
Increasing phonemic
Phoneme
In a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....

awareness
Teaching phonics
Making text connections (Activating prior knowledge)
Predicting (Text talk)
Building vocabulary
Inferencing / drawing conclusions
Sequencing
Identifying elements of story structure
Recognizing point of view
Visualizing setting (Time, place and atmosphere)
Performing Dialogue (Plays and Readers’ Theater)
Rereading for fluency
Retelling for comprehension checks
Engaging Multiple Intelligences through writing, music, art, Dance

Hornbooks

The child’s alphabet book is considered one of the oldest literary genres of American literature. Its familiar structure can be traced back to the first hornbook

Hornbook

A hornbook is a book that serves as primer for study. The hornbook originated in England in 1450 . The term has been applied to a few different study materials in different fields...

s of colonial America. Despite the name, hornbooks were actually wooden tablets displaying letters of the alphabet, a syllabary and prayers for novice readers. Andrew Tuer

Andrew White Tuer

Andrew White Tuer was a publisher, writer and printer, born in Sunderland in 1838. Orphaned at an early age, he was raised by his great-uncle, Andrew White, after whom he was named. After his education, he went to London with the plan of becoming a doctor, but that did not suit him, and after...

in 1896 described a typical hornbook with a line separating the lower case and capital letters from the syllabary. This syllabarium or syllabary, likely added to the hornbook in 1596, taught pronunciations of vowel and consonant combinations.

ab eb ib ob ub ba be bi bo bu

These syllables are possible ancestors to the modern instructional practice of new readers working with onsets and rimes

Syllable

A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter. A syllable is typically made up of a syllable nucleus with optional initial and final margins .Syllables are often considered the phonological "building...

in word families. From the first hornbook, the alphabet format cemented the learning progression from syllables to words.

An example of the reliance on the alphabet for reading instruction is found in John Bunyan

John Bunyan

John Bunyan was an English Christian writer and preacher, famous for writing The Pilgrim's Progress. Though he was a Reformed Baptist, in the Church of England he is remembered with a Lesser Festival on 30 August, and on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church on 29 August.-Life:In 1628,...

's, A Book for Boys and Girls, or Country Rhymes for Children.

To those who are in years but Babes I bow

My Pen to teach them what the Letters be,

And how they may improve their A. B. C.

Nor let my pretty Children them despise.

All needs must there begin, that would be wise,

Nor let them fall under Discouragement,

Who at their hornbook stick, and time hath spent,

Upon that A. B. C., while others do

Into their primer or their Psalter
Psalter
A psalter is a volume containing the Book of Psalms, often with other devotional material bound in as well, such as a liturgical calendar and litany of the Saints. Until the later medieval emergence of the book of hours, psalters were the books most widely owned by wealthy lay persons and were...

go.

As referenced in this verse, it was an expectation of the period that “babes” began as readers with knowledge of the alphabet. Armed with the letters of the alphabet from the hornbook, children encountered other early forms of reading materials.

Battledores

As one successor of the horn book, the battledore was a more complex type of horn book printed on thick paper folded in three parts containing enlarged text with word to object illustrations for each of the capital letters bordering the four sides. The letter-word associations provide insight into eighteenth century religious and sociocultural priorities.

A is represented by an image of an Angel

J Judge

K King

M Mi-Tre (religious Head wear)

Q Queen

T Turk

X Xerxes

Z Zeal (kneeling figure with open prayer book)

Tuer's Royal Battledore illustrated the lower case alphabet letters with a for Apple; j, k, q, and x for Judge, King, Queen and Xerxes; m for Mouse and z for Zany jester. In fact, some battledores' upper and lower borders contained this rhyme:

He that ne'er learns his ABC,

For ever will a Blockhead be.

But he that learns these Letters fair,

Shall have a Coach to take the Air.

Thus, there is in evidence a gradual shift to more secular topics for general reading instruction from predominantly religious material.

Primers and Spellers

Experienced with both hornbooks and battledores, children graduated on to the modern concept of a small book, multiple paper pages covered with a thick, protective layer. Early reading booklets or religious primers contained both the alphabet and increasingly complicated lists of alphabetized syllables along with selected excerpts from the Bible. From tablet to booklet, the ABC format served as the most common framework for additional reading materials. The first church primers paralleled the introduction of school textbooks known as “the ABC”. Both colonial primers and ABC spellers employed the alphabet as an organizational feature for literacy instruction and spiritual study.

Originally imported from England, children’s reading textbooks aligned with the educational emphasis on the alphabet. While students were first trained to recite the alphabet, moralistic readings were framed around the letters of the alphabet. During the American colonial period the more secular “ABC” spellers quickly fell out of favor in comparison with the more religious primers; nevertheless, the alphabet remained the most systematic means of ordering the written contents of schoolbooks.

Versions of the New England Primer

Dating back to 1683, the New England Primer contained rhyming couplets for each letter of the alphabet. These patterned rhymes were often supported by gloomy woodcut illustrations. The content of these paired lines varied from overwhelmingly religious to somewhat secular depending upon the particular version of the New England Primer.

The standard Primer beginning 'In Adam

Adam

Adam is a figure in the Book of Genesis. According to the creation myth of Abrahamic religions, he is the first human. In the Genesis creation narratives, he was created by Yahweh-Elohim , and the first woman, Eve was formed from his rib...

's fall, we sinned all' remained consistent throughout the numerous published texts; however, rhymes were occasionally edited for religious or political purposes, as demonstrated by the 1729 edition of the New England Primer. The passage, ‘our KING the good, No man of blood’ illustrated the letter K Due to the conflict with the English monarchy, The K couplet was altered and appeared in the revised 1777 edition as ‘Proud Korah

Korah

Korah or Kórach Some older English translations, as well as the Douay Bible), spell the name Core, and many Eastern European translations have Korak...

's troop, was swallowed up.’ Similarly, in the same 1777 version, 'The dog will bite, a thief at night' was replaced by a Biblical reference. 'The deluge drowned the earth around’ was inserted for ‘the watchful dog’. Referring to mortal sin

Mortal sin

Mortal sins are in the theology of some, but not all Christian denominations wrongful acts that condemn a person to Hell after death. These sins are considered "mortal" because they constitute a rupture in a person's link to God's saving grace: the person's soul becomes "dead", not merely weakened...

, the original U for 'Uriah

Uriah the Hittite

Uriah the Hittite was a soldier in King David’s army mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. He was the husband of Bathsheba, and was murdered by order of David by having the soldiers retreat from him in battle. Uriah's wife was pregnant by King David through an adulterous affair...

's beauteous wife made David seek his life’ was censored by omitting U and skipping to V. The alphabet letters were used to teach the moral code aspired by society and religion.

In the New England Primer, the couplets were followed by alphabetized Biblical sentences; the “Alphabet of Lessons for Youth” was designed for further reading practice and lifelong moral instruction. Both the 1777 and 1843 editions of the Primer maintained the same sentence excerpts from the Bible

Bible

The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

. The following are a few examples highlighting letters A, D, K and U:

A Wise son maketh a glad father, but a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother.

DO not the abominable thing which I hate saith the Lord.

KEEP thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.

UPON the wicked, God shall rain an horrible tempest.

Clearly, the immensely popular New England Primer continued to influence educational practice even beyond the revolutionary period. Of parallel longevity, the battledore continued to be published well into the 18th century. Believed to be the inventor of battledores in 1746, Benjamin Collins actually printed 100,000 copies between 1771 and 1780

Versions of The Child’s New Plaything

Exemplifying the move away from strictly religious texts to more moral works, an outstanding example of the next generation of readers was the 1742 version of The Child’s New Plaything. Sensitive to a youthful audience, the anonymous author introduced the alphabet with a lettered story about an appetizing apple pie.

A Apple-Pye.

B bit it.

C cut it.

D divided it.

E eat it.

F fought for it.

G got it.

H had it.

J join’d for’t.

K kept it.

L long’d for’t.

M mourn’d for’t.

N nodded at it.

O open’d it.

P peep’d in’t.

Q quarter’d it.

R run for’t.

S snatch’d it.

T turn’d it.

U use'd it.

V view’d it.

W won it.

X
Y
Z
&
I wish I had a Piece of it now in my Hand.

Later versions of the rhyme, now known as the Apple Pie ABC

Apple Pie ABC

Apple Pie ABC is one of the earliest and most enduring English alphabet rhymes for children.-Publishing history:The Apple Pie ABC is a simple rhyme meant to teach children the order of the alphabet and relates the various ways children react to an apple pie. After the first line, A was an apple...

, became more elaborate and diversified.

In addition, The Child’s New Plaything contained the alphabet story, A was an Archer, which was also to go through many later editions.

Present

Today there are many diverse kinds of alphabet books that captivate a reader’s interest through alliteration

Alliteration

In language, alliteration refers to the repetition of a particular sound in the first syllables of Three or more words or phrases. Alliteration has historically developed largely through poetry, in which it more narrowly refers to the repetition of a consonant in any syllables that, according to...

, onomatopoeia, creative narrative

Narrative

A narrative is a constructive format that describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount", and is related to the adjective gnarus, "knowing" or "skilled"...

s, poetry

Poetry

Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...

of all kinds, clever three-dimensional illusion

Illusion

An illusion is a distortion of the senses, revealing how the brain normally organizes and interprets sensory stimulation. While illusions distort reality, they are generally shared by most people....

s, mysterious visual treasure hunt

Treasure hunt

A treasure hunt is one of many different types of games which can have one or more players who try to find hidden articles, locations or places by using a series of clues. This is a fictional activity; treasure hunting can also be a real life activity. Treasure hunt games may be an indoor or...

s, humor, and curiosity.