School Library Journal Review
PreS-Gr 1-Keith Baker's incredibly inventive occupation-based alphabet book (Beach Lane, 2010) has been beautifully designed and hilariously interpreted by premier animators, Soup2Nuts. You will never look at little green peas the same way again! Tiny round pea people cavort about with delightful vocals by Crystal Taliefero and backup singers, including the Oakview Elementary Choir. The peas literally animate the alphabet, illuminating different activities and jobs for each of the 26 letters, beginning with acrobats, astronauts, and artists. They humorously demonstrate actions and occupations like climbers and campers; painters, poets, and plumbers; quitters and quarterbacks. The DVD is punctuated by infectious rhythms and rhymes that young children will want to emulate again and again. Baker's colorful letters are constantly swarming with unique pea people. Turn on the read-along subtitles so students can follow the highlighted letters and words easily. A teacher's guide is included, as is an outstanding interview with the author/illustrator. "We are peas! The alphabet peas! Now tell us, please, who are you?" This perfect lead-in invites teachers and kids to follow the pattern with other veggies. Never has the alphabet been more entertaining.-Lonna Pierce, MacArthur & Thomas Jefferson Schools, Binghamton, NY (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Hundreds of animated green peas tumble through the alphabet in this refreshingly original book. The illustrations are full of vitality and good humor, and the rhyming text never misses a beat. Each large, pastel letter is accompanied by energetic peas introducing themselves ("We're acrobats, artists, and astronauts in space"). Most letters occupy a single page, but Baker combines some letters the way children repeating a just-learned alphabet often do. The peas are all small and round, but Baker (Just How Long Can a Long String Be?!) gives them stick legs and arms, along with lively faces and costumes, to demonstrate his inventive view of each letter. To illustrate the letters H and I ("We're hikers, inventors, and investigators"), two peas climb a branch leaning on the H, a pea in a Sherlock Holmes hat tries to decipher footprints below, and a single pea with a light bulb above his head, smiles at his newly invented wheel that dots the letter I. Baker's after-the-Z surprise ending is a question for readers: "Now tell us, please... WHO ARE YOU?" Ages 3-7. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
You might not know it, but peas provide a terrific blank canvas for creating picture book characters. With the addition of two dots for eyes, a mouth, sproutlike arms and legs, and minimal accessories, a pea can become anything: "We're acrobats, artists, and astronauts in space. / We're builders, bathers, and bikers in a race." Baker goes through the alphabet and in bouncy rhyming couplets comes up with identities for peas. He makes clever use of the letters -- on the B page, those builders are working away at the top of the letter; the bathers take a bubble bath inside the lower opening of the letter, and the bikers race by on the ground below. Visual and verbal jokes abound, as on the page for the letter G, where peas form a circle and hand presents around to one another: "We're givers and takers." The tiny peas are set on large white pages dominated by the featured letter of the alphabet, making it a book for close examination rather than group use, rewarding attention with some clever ideas and many laughs. From HORN BOOK, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
A passel of industrious peas narrates inventive, alphabetically arranged avocations: "We are peasalphabet peas! / We work and play in the ABCs." Amid towering, digitally textured capital letters, Baker's veggies, sprouting green arms, legs and animated physiognomies, star in scores of charmingly detailed tableaux. At "F," farmers hoe and water at "Happea Farms," a duo waves checkered flags at a bike race's finish line and a quintet of friends jams in a band whose drum kit announces its name: "Pod." "K" features (soccer) kickers, kayakers navigating the letter's watery, angled bend and a couple of kingsone atop a tower with crown and scepter, the other crooning into a mike below (he's Elvis, of course). The well-chosen text type, Frankfurter Medium, pudgy and whimsical, proves eminently crisp and legible for emergent readers. This high-energy romp invites repeat visits by young browsersthere's plenty to pore over and giggle about. Delicious! Peas out. (Picture book. 3-7) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
This cheerful alphabet book introduces each letter as a large, colorful shape surrounded by tiny pea creatures, green circles with arms, legs, eyes, mouths, and occasionally accessories such as hats, diving masks or flippers. The pea folk demonstrate occupations and actions beginning with each letter and identified in the rhyming, rhythmic text. The letters L, M, N, and O, which so often run meaninglessly together in the alphabet song, appear on the same double-page spread. Most of the other letters appear on their own pages or spreads, while the four pages devoted to the little characters' own letter, P, illustrate the lines We're painters, / poets, / and plumbers fixing leaks. / We're pilots, / parachutists, / we're peas and . . . / we're unique. With its digital illustrations' luminous colors, buoyant spirit, and engaging characters, this handsome picture book is definitely worth a second look, even in the overcrowded field of alphabet books.--Phelan, Carolyn Copyright 2010 Booklist
