Better Together! Every Little Letter by Deborah Underwood

 

ONCE UPON A TIME, THERE WAS A CITY OF LETTERS, SURROUNDED BY WALLS.

THE LETTERS WERE ALL THE SAME. THE Hs FELT SAFE BEHIND THEIR WALLS.

Since everybody was alike, it felt comfortable, but not at all exciting. So when one little h found a missing stone in their wall, she couldn't resist peeping through the hole. She saw another little letter--an i.

TOGETHER THEY MADE SOMETHING-- "hi."

But when the big letters found out, they hurriedly filled in the hole in the wall and boarded it up. There would be no more of this communication! But it was too late. The little letter h began to send her name over the walls written on a paper airplane. Little o found one!

oh? oh!

Soon the little letters were sending their letters over all the walls. All the X's make the O's tic-tac-toe games more competitive!

BUT THEN THE BIG LETTERS FOUND OUT.

All the little letters were seized--except for two that little h managed to hide. She looked at letters d and n and couldn't think what to make of them, until she looked at them from a different point of view:

She found she had up. And she looked up! That night all the little letters stole up on top of the walls that divided them. They got together and spelled...

together

And that was the beginning of lots of new words like kindness and cooperation that they made together, in Deborah Underwood's recent, Every Little Letter (Dial Books, 2020). For young ones just learning  letters and somewhat older children who are beginning the understand the power and magic of words, this latest is an unusual book that helps teach children how to combine letters and find words and which helps them think "outside the box," to understand and feel what divides us and shapes us as humans.

Artist Joy Hwang Ruis' charming pastel illustrations give personality to the little letters as they learn how to make something of themselves and teach the big letters a thing or two about meaning. Deborah Underwood, author of the highly praised and poetic The Quiet Book and The Loud Book!, was equally well-reviewed for this new one. Says Publishers Weekly, "Smartly executed . . . Underlines how diversity leads to strength."