Though perhaps more playful than practical, the concept will help new readers and new English language learners conquer some of the more peculiar aspects of our language. This book is hilarious!! What a great way to make kids feel good about learning! It shows you that language is hard and encourages you to laugh about the hard stuff and not feel bad that it’s hard. Teaching kids with humor – who’d a thunk it works?! Buy one for every child and adult on your list. You will officially be the coolest gift giver ever.” It’s hard to argue with success, but guides that actually do the math will be more useful to budding capitalists.

Most children will agree the book is “smafunderful (smart + fun + wonderful).” (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 7-10) At first glance, this looks like a book for pre-schoolers, so I’m not sure how my nearly nine-year old niece will react when she unwraps it. I’m confident she’ll find it funny - but there’s also a book token/voucher inside. UPDATE: She was initially wary, then intrigued, but her 11.5-year old sister and their father were more taken by it. Then there are also those letters in the negative, such as "U" is not for You and "Y" is not for Why. So, what are "U" and "Y" for? I guess that is why this is the worst alphabet book; you have to accept those disappointments. I’ve long thought that the poor correlation of the sound of English words to their spelling needed to be highlighted. This humorous book does a great job of lampooning word-initial sounds versus word-initial letters. It should be a required textbook for all ESL classes!”In 2020, the sequel, No Reading Allowed: The Worst Read-Aloud Book Ever, was released by Sourcebooks Explore.

The authors had plenty to choose from. English has a long history of incorporating and adapting words from languages including Norse, Greek, Latin, French, German, and Hindi. and other times it means showing how that letter is not actually used where you might expect it to be. P Is for Pterodactyl: The Worst Alphabet Book Ever - by Chris Carpenter and Maria Beddia was almost purpose built for me. Long before George Carlin asked about how the “w” in one got tangled into the otherwise “w” less two, or for that matter why it takes so many times to get to, too, two right? I was not getting the hang of spelling. “I: be fore "e" except after "c" is arbitrary enough if you are going to pretend away words like Chief, Believe and Field and there are others. I also have a clear memory of in class spelling bee when a friend of mine nailed Pneumonia while I was fortunately cautious enough to not call Bull, even as I was thinking it. (David got it right by realizing teacher was reading from a dictionary and was still in the letter “P” ) With The Worst Alphabet Book Ever we get a comedic twist on the entire shelf of alphabet books. Ain’t nobody here but us words that fail to behave. Phonic teachers, eat your heart out. Sorry, phonetically that’s: eat your hart out.Neither of us are children’s book authors by trade — Chris is a computer programmer, and I’m a rapper otherwise known as Lushlife,” he said. “When we started down the road to bring this book to life, I don’t think we realized just how long the process would take. From start to finish, the project took almost three years to complete. Even though the book consists of just a couple hundred words, we went through scores of revisions. On top of that, we hardly knew anyone in the publishing world, so it took over a year just to find the right folks to help us get a publisher on board. Once we were able to cross that hurdle, our amazing illustrator, Maria Beddia spent a year in her studio working on the funny drawings. I can’t think of anyone else who could’ve so beautifully interpreted our crazy requests, like having ‘a french leopard and a tiny witch sitting in a creepy Victorian home playing the Ouija board.'” a b Russo, Maria (October 19, 2018). "Standout New Picture Books". The New York Times . Retrieved March 11, 2019.

This book is really hilarious! My friend and I laughed like school children. I had to look up a few of the words for pronunciation, which was fun. Also, I really like the illustrations.” Overall, though, I think this book will be enjoyed by those who love silliness, learning about words, and combining the two into one activity (so most dads should enjoy this one :p). 4 solid stars for this book.

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Beryl Exley is an experienced classroom teacher and lecturer in English Curriculum and Literacies Education with the school of Education and Professional Studies at Griffith University in Queensland. She is the immediate past National President of the ALEA National Council (2017–2019) and is a very proud ALEA Life Member. Beryl co-edited Literacies in Early Childhood: Foundations for Equity and Quality with Annette Woods in 2020 (published by OUP).