Looking for an interesting book to teach your little one her/his ABC’s…. we have curated everyone’s favourites from our kbc facebook group! Here goes….
For 1 – 5 years
A To Z – This is Sandra Boynton’s fun book on alphabets and gets ordered often!
Big Digger ABC: An A To Z Of Things That Go!
Animal ABC Board Book by Wonder House for 0-3 years (26 pages). This gets ordered very often. Vichithra has posted some inside pages of this book in our fb group here. In her words ” An excellent chunky board book of alphabets which is appropriate in size for small hands and not heavy too. Each page for every alphabet with an animal what it does is written perfectly and beautifully illustrated. From Alligator learning alphabets to Zebra all zipped up would be new ABC for little ones. Little D’s favorite ABC book.”
See, Touch, Feel: ABC (0 – 3 years)
Mrs. Peanuckle’s Alphabet book series (0 – 3 years)
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom (1-4 years). Prabha has shared an incredible read aloud with her 21 month old here in the fb group.
Chicka Chicka: ABCs and 123s Collection (1 – 4 years)
My First London Alphabet Campbell books for 2 years+ (10 pages)
The British Museum ABC (0 – 3 years)
I bought this for Darwin when he was around 8 months old and it helped to introduce Alphabets and art simultaneously to him.
-Divya
ABC’s of Virtue – (0 – 6 years) Quoting Amardeep:
Not only was the book not preachy at all, it is probably one of the most unique books I’ve ever come across. Not written in a story form, it introduces 26 key virtues every child (human) should know – one for each alphabet!
Here We Are Book of Animals by Oliver Jeffers for 1-3 years. Punidha says, “It is full of animals from A to Z and it teaches ABC’s in easy way, so ideally for young babies and toddlers who start their reading journey.”
A Is For Apple (lift the flap and trace) (2 – 5 years). [This book also has a counting version 123 Count with Me ]
I wanted something colorful, interactive with both small as well as capital letters in the same page. “ A is for Apple “ is just the book with tracks to trace for capital letters and flaps to lift for small letters. Very easy to explain names and sound of letters and lays foundation for writing by enabling tracing.
-Asma
ABC Dance! (0-4 years)
Lmno Peas by Keith Baker (2-5 years) – 36 pages – super fun book!
Solimo Board Book: ABC (2 – 4 years)
Solimo All In One Board Book (2 – 4 years)
Scholastic First Step Trace and Learn ABC (2 – 5 years)
Tracing if the alphabets and flaps make it interesting and easier to teach ABC to little ones.
-Divya
Chris Ferrie’s ABC’s series (2 – 5 years)
Mog’s ABC for 2-5 years. Quoting Punidha: “It’s a story of Judith Kerr’s famous cat Mog and her adventure on Debbie’s birthday. It is written in ABC way with lovely illustrations. This is a great book to learn alphabets and so many words.”
A B See for 2-5 years (32 pages). In Punidha’s words: “I just love this book myself. Each page is illustrated with embossed letters which can act as sensory play for young babies and each letter is formed by so many images. You can find each letter in letter illustrated so we play ‘Find the letter’ in letter and it’s so much fun. The story is written alphabetically and lovely as well. What I really loved the most is, at the end of the book, all the words are given in detail so that it’s easy to go and identify the words and learn them. I strongly recommend this book for everyone to teach ABC’s in a fun way.” Maithili has shared some incredible inside pages in the fb group here.
Punidha has shared inside pages of all these 3 books here in the fb group.
The Alphabet Book Of Lower Case Letters (2 – 8 years)
The Alphabet of Animals and Birds (2-7 years) This has been featured on our website as well.
For 3 – 5 years
Dr. Seuss’s ABC – this gets ordered often
Chipmunk’s ABC: Amardeep has this one:
This book was bought when I realised that my child did not know his alphabets when he was almost 4 years old. Like all Richard Scarry books, this one has cute, loveable characters through the book and my son learnt his ABCs through this book.
We have Usborne. There are so many things to look at on each page! Heaps of learning and fun! We never explained what alphabet stands for what, but M is starting to pick that up on her own, thanks to this book.
-Girija
It has beautiful carvings in shape of letters as well as shape of object/animal starting with a particular alphabet. We had so much fun touching the embossed letter, tracing them, feeding carve outs and A to Z was familiar in no time. Thick boardbook pages are easy for very young to explore on their own.Also the book is very sturdy, next to indestructible!
-Asma
Alphabet Ice Cream illustrated by the legendary Nick Sharratt is recommended by Punidha.
This has few words in each page varying from 2-5 words. Illustrations are wow
with Nick and Sue travel throughout the book with us.
Once Upon An Alphabet (3-7 years) by Oliver Jeffers. Sharadhi has this and has shared a review and inside pages in our kbc fb group here. Quoting her:
“There’s a story for every letter in this book and I can’t begin to say how beautiful each story is. They are beautiful enough to be a full length picture books in itself .
The huge smiles or happiness when you find your old characters from his books like the boy from “How to catch the star” or penguin from ” lost and found” or when references keeps coming back from previous pages like the cup, cucumber or owl and octopus are out of the world… For example for the letter S, he writes a story called sink or swim, a story of a regular cucumber who wants to be a sea cucumber but sinks to the bottom. Then again owl and octopus from the letter O story, make a re entry to save the cucumber.. Now we rush back to letter O to see if there are traces of cucumber there and yes it is, what a delight ..
This book is an adventure for both kids and adults, the games we played while reading this, like counting the number of words from the main letter in each of their story, finding references etc was just amazing..
In love with this book though this doesn’t actually teach the children alphabets, it does much more. It celebrates creativity and may be suitable for kids between 5-8 , who can relate the pictures to story and their combination…”
Scholastic: Little Mates (3+ years) – If you wish to buy this book from Amazon, click here.
Hey, That’s An A! (3.5+ years). Achira highly recommends this book and in her review says,
If you have a smart toddler or pre-K kid who doesn’t like the idea of studying, you got to grab this book. Adu shows me how he can change into the alphabets and it is a laughing riot with all of us rolling and laughing till our tummies hurt.
Alphabet Street (3 – 7 years)
A is for Bee: An Alphabet Book in Translation for 3-7 years (40 pages). Punidha gifted this to Prabha for Secret Santa and the inside pages have been shared here.
For 4 – 8 years
Alpha Oops!: The Day Z Went First
Alligators All Around An Alphabet by Maurice Sendak. This too has been featured on our website.
The Construction Alphabet Book by Jerry Pallotta
Everything from aerial ladder to laser and other vehicles used in construction has been illustrated beautifully. And a must have for Vehicle Lovers.
– Divya
K Is For Kissing A Cool Kangaroo by the legendary Giles Andreae is also recommended by Punidha. Quoting her:
There are so many words in each page. For instance, the letter T has words – Toucan, Tiger, Teddy, Tapir, Tortoise, Turtle, Tomato, Tangerine, Toffee, Tea, Teapot, Truffle cake, Toad, Trout fish (New to me
, pls add if I have missed noticing anything else).The letter V has words – Vampire, vampire bats, vulture, vole, violet flower and most interestingly ‘Venus flytrap’ plant. Have you noticed it? There are very tiny things to be observed in each page. This book has rhyming text and illustration is awesome, so we sing like a song that catches my kids’ attention and make them love this
.
B is for Breathe: The ABCs of Coping with Fussy and Frustrating Feelings by Melissa M. Boyd for 4-8 years. Heliana has shared a review:
Another lovely book from this group recos. A lovely book for toddlers going through big emotions and learning how to control and how to express through imagination, art, music and more.At 3.9 years old we are going through different feelings and emotions and such books are of great help for young toddlers who are still learning how to better express their feelings and emotions.Just today she picked this book and turned the page where there is E for Eat a healthy snack and asked for a whole apple and strictly asked for it not to be cut as she wanted to eat it just like the girl in the pic
It’s a good book we continuously go to everytime we have big emotions.A couple pages i found them to be little more Americanized but you can still try your own interpretation. For example the page that has P for Prayer, since we dont really pray and aren’t religious, we have interpreted in our own way where we draw a parallel of praying to meditation which my daughter is more familiar and fond of at the moment.The pages are bit too thin but overall it’s a great book!
Take Away the A – Amardeep has this one and highly recommends it
Want to read a really fun book with great illustrations, and amazing word play, that kids just starting to read can read by themselves? Then get this book. I really don’t know what I love the most about it – the name of the book (that made neil fall in love with it immediately), the amazing word play on each page (that has made me read this book innumerable times!), the fact that neil could read most of it by himself, the superb quality of the paper, the huge size of the book or that we enjoyed it sooo much that we now want to find our own alphabeast in every word (this is the coolest, i think)!
P Is for Pterodactyl: The Worst Alphabet Book Ever (for 5 years+) Amardeep has this one.
NEW RELEASE!
WHOS AFRAID OF Z? NOT ME! by Lubaina Bandukwala – an interesting book dedicated to the much ignored letter Z!!! Excerpts from Amardeep’s review on the fb group :
This hilarious book is exactly about what we all face at times – coffee spills on the laptop, and after careful mopping and tap tapping, they find that the letter ‘z’ isn’t working. Oh, such a relief, who uses z anyway! Z isn’t happy with the way they are talking, and decides to come in the little girls dreams and hilariously informs her about certain words that would be impossible to write without z.
This is such a beautiful book for varied reasons – it highlights the fact that while we may think someone is less important, in reality, everyone is important. We must value everyone’s uniqueness. And the way the story does this, it’s really wonderful.
The book also instills a love for letters, words and language in a child. And finally, I absolutely love the fact that it shows a woman working with tools to repair the computer! A big yayyy to that.
J Is For Jalebi – Hindi Alphabets for Little Foodies Read Amardeep’s detailed review here.
Thank you Asma, Girija, Neha, Achira, Divya, Punidha, Amardeep, Heliana for sharing your awesome recommendations.
[Note from Team Kids Book Café: For your convenience, affiliate links (MARKED IN PINK) to some of the book titles & images have been added to enable you to buy the books from AMAZON, should you wish to! A very small amount of money comes to kidsbookcafe.com when you purchase a book via the amazon affiliate link provided (at absolutely no extra cost to you!). Do let us know if you need information about other children’s books by writing to asha@kidsbookcafe.com.]
