Pistes d'exploration

Compare this alphabet book to others that target a preschool audience. What features make it appealing, or not, for an older audience?

In the afterword, the author mentions that “someone is leaving a message behind.” Considering the urban setting, what do you think is the message? What if the setting were your neighbourhood?

As a small group, sketch one of the photos in the centre of a large piece of paper. Working graffiti-style around the image, add pertinent adjectives, questions and observations. Read other groups’ ideas and add to them.

Choose an image. Imagine you can “zoom out” from the picture. Create a piece of art to show the larger scene. 

Discuss the pictures, words and materials in the book.

Written language can be observed all around us. Explore your environment, neighbourhood or city to find English words. Take pictures of these words with a camera, phone or tablet.

Decide on a common category for your own photo alphabet (e.g. food, homes, machines). Find or take pictures and crop as necessary. Add photo descriptions.

Create a real or virtual photo Environmental Alphabet Exhibition. Write and send invitations to classes, parents or others.

I Is for Inuksuk: An Arctic Celebration

Mots-clés

Picture book , alphabet , art , city life , illustrations (photographs) , one word per page , perspectives , photography

Commentaire descriptif

“In the city, messages are left on brick walls, garbage bins, billboards … and many other things,” states the author in her afterword. And so it is that the words featured in this photographic alphabet book come from the walls, windows and walkways of a typical urban setting. The word “Kids” is a vinyl decal stuck on a workshop window; “Shoes” comes from the painted steel of a freight car. A concrete street curb sports the spray-painted word “Meet.” Each letter of the alphabet—in both upper and lower case—is paired with a full-page photograph of the associated word, and a brief explanation of its source. “Is” is “cut from diamond-plate aluminum, inlaid in cement.” From where? “A city sidewalk.” The close-range photos encourage readers to take a closer look, to try to imagine the city scene from whence they come. Fittingly, the book begins with the word “Art” (found pasted on a lamppost), as the book offers a fresh perspective on the definition of art and where it might be found. Readers and aspiring photographers will be inspired to observe their surroundings more carefully, to hunt for the messages that are constantly being communicated. “The city is talking.”