ALPHABETABUM

What happens to the pictures of us? Nowadays they go straight to the Internet where anyone anywhere in the world can see them. And they’re nothing terribly special.

It wasn’t that way a hundred years ago, when getting your picture taken was a very important event. You dressed your best and you looked thoughtfully and for a long time into the awesome, magical lens of the camera. But even these important pictures sometimes were lost, sold by the photographer or even thrown away by families. After many decades some of them found their way to flea-market tables in New York City, Rome, and Paris, where the artist Vladimir Radunsky couldn’t take his eyes off of them. He bought them, took them home, and looked at them over and over. Now he has chosen his favorites for this book and his friend Chris Raschka has written a poem for each one in an imagined alphabet of names and personalities. A New York Review Children’s Collection Original. Chris Raschka has written and/or illustrated more than sixty books for children, including Yo! Yes?, Charlie Parker Played Be Bop, Mysterious Thelonious, Sluggy Slug, Five for a Little One, A Poke in the I, and The Hello, Goodbye Window. He has received a Caldecott Honor and two Caldecott Medals, the Ezra Jack Keats Book Award, and five New York Times Best Illustrated Book Awards. He has knitted nine sweaters and one sock. Someday he hopes to knit another sock. He lives in New York City. Vladimir Radunsky has published more than thirty books for children. Many of them were translated and published in France, the U.K., Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Germany, and Japan. The books received numerous awards in the Untied States and in Europe, among them the New York Times Book Review Best Illustrated Book of the Year, and have been on the New York Times bestseller list. His most recent book, in collaboration with Jennifer Berne, On a Beam of Light, A Story of Albert Einstein, received six starred reviews and was picked by Kirkus Reviews as the Best Book of 2013. Original art from the books as been exhibited in France, Italy, Switzerland, Russia, Japan, and the United States.