Alphabet City
Synopsis
“You can find letters without ever looking in a book or on a sign – without even looking at a word. Take a tour of Alphabet City, and soon you’ll see letters in the unlikeliest places. Look closely! There’s a G in the curve of an ornate lamppost, an H in the crisscrossing walkways of a park, a U atop a fancy brick wall.
Uptown or downtown, from beltways to subways, rendering the ordinary extraordinary, Stephen T. Johnson’s showstopping images invite us to explore our surroundings in a whole new way.”
Viking, New York, NY
ISBN 0-670-85631-2, Copyright 1995
Trim Size: 8 3/4 x 10 3/4, Hardcover, 32 pages
Awards and Honors
A 1996 Caldecott Honor Book
ALA Notable Award
A New York Times Best Illustrated Book of the Year
A 1996 Children’s Book of Distinction by Hungry Mind Review
A 1996 Children’s Books Mean Business ABA-CBC
A New York Public Library’s 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing
Gold and Silver Medals from the Society of Illustrators, New York, NY
Horn Book Magazine Starred Review and a Horn Book Fanfare Award
Parenting Magazine’s Reading Magic Award
Parents Magazine’s Best Books of 1995 and a Parents Pick of the Year
Publishers Weekly Starred Review
School Library Journal Starred Review
Children’s Book of the Year and marked for Outstanding Merit by The Bank Street Child Study Children’s Book Committee
Wisconsin Library Association’s Outstanding Achievement in Children’s Literature
Featured in it entirety on ABC’s Good Morning America with Charlie Gibson and Joan Lunden
Reviews
“The 26 paintings by Stephen T. Johnson in Alphabet City must be the most beautiful set of images in a children’s book since Chris Van Allsburg’s Polar Express.… From the sawhorse that forms an “A” to the fire escape that makes a “Z,” every one of these richly colored full pages is a pleasure to behold.”
- Paul Goldberger, The New York Times Book Review
“Celebrating the lines, curves and shapes of the letters, Johnson elevates the alphabet into art…A visual tour de force, Johnson’s ingenious alphabet book transcends the genre by demanding close inspection of not just letters, but the world.”
-Publishers Weekly, starred review
“The pictorial equivalents of “found poetry,” the twenty-six studies command attention and encourage readers to conduct similar explorations of their own. All are imaginative, stimulating, and striking. A book to savor again and again.”
-Horn Book Magazine, starred review
“I went into a bookstore and I found a book [Alphabet City] that I just fell in love with. Very, very cleverly done.”
-Charles Gibson, Good Morning America, ABC Television
“A thoroughly original look at the alphabet, exactly the way it appears to children in an urban landscape. This simple yet astonishing book invites parents and children to find the hidden letters in everyday surroundings.”
-Parents Magazine, A Parents Pick of the Year
“The Library of Congress cataloged Alphabet City as “juvenile literature,” which will probably do nothing to keep grow-ups from filching their kids’ copies of the book. Artist Stephen T. Johnson “built” his city by finding capital letters in lampposts, fire escapes, the Brooklyn Bridge, even negative space and rendering them stunningly with pastels, watercolors, gouache, and charcoal.”
-Linda Hall, New York Magazine
“This is not only a beautiful book, but one that transforms the way we view the world.”
-Hungry Mind Review, A 1996 Children’s Book of Distinction Award