A Helpful Alphabet of Friendly Objects

by John Updike

This extraordinary alphabet book offers numerous rewards--poems that are by turns thoughtful and lively; crisp photographs that seem both familiar and new; and a fresh design to ensure repeated readings. Each poem and photograph describes ordinary things in language and images playfully accessible to preschoolers. Full color.

1 pages, Hardcover

First published July 10, 1995

About the author

John Hoyer Updike was an American writer. Updike's most famous work is his Rabbit series (Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit Is Rich; Rabbit At Rest; and Rabbit Remembered). Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest both won Pulitzer Prizes for Updike. Describing his subject as "the American small town, Protestant middle class," Updike is well known for his careful craftsmanship and prolific writing, having published 22 novels and more than a dozen short story collections as well as poetry, literary criticism and children's books. Hundreds of his stories, reviews, and poems have appeared in The New Yorker since the 1950s. His works often explore sex, faith, and death, and their inter-relationships.

He died of lung cancer at age 76.

Reviews

[Julie G]

John Updike wrote everything, so naturally a few children's books made it into the mix. We own one, A Child's Calendar, which I can not recommend enough, but this one was new to me.

This book was a collaboration between John Updike and his son, David, who is an English Lit teacher and a photographer, and I got the feeling that it was something Mr. Updike agreed to do with his adult child, in the last decade of his life, as his way of saying, “Son, it must have been a challenge, growing up with a father who filled novel after novel with the “p” word and the “c” word.”

“Oh, and, son? Sorry about all of those. . . parties.”

(Google John Updike. You'll see what I mean. Easy to feel a bit sympathetic toward the offspring.)

This collection is sweet, rather than exceptional, and I'm relieved to report that, in A Helpful Alphabet of Friendly Objects, "c" is for “cat” and not for. . .

[Ian Roseen]

Baby and daddy like books by the same author

[Angela]

Nice photos illustrate this book, which has a poem for each letter. I like that he generally bases the poems on everyday objects (cats, dogs, shoes & socks), although "knot" did seem like an odd choice for k. Too long for our story time (but perhaps all alphabet books are). The poems themselves were hit & miss for me: c(at) & l(amp) were just so-so, but I loved y(ou) and z(ero).

[Kara]

This ABC book is a book that features a poem for objects that are used in everyday life. This book would be great to have in a classroom with younger age students to teach them about poetry, letters, and the uses of everyday things.