The Alphabet Tree

The letters of the alphabet live in a tree, but they are small and alone and easily scattered by the wind. A word-bug teaches them to band together into words, and then a clever purple caterpillar teaches them something more powerful still: that words arranged into sentences can carry a message. Published in 1968 at the height of the Vietnam War, the letters arrange themselves to say "peace on earth." Leo Lionni's collage illustrations are, as always, graphically brilliant and deceptively simple — he was one of the great picture book artists of the twentieth century, and this quiet, radical little book is one of his best.