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The Numberlys | July 22, 2015

by William Joyce and Christina Ellis (Atheneum/Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing, 2014)

“Once upon a time there was no alphabet. Only numbers.” So begins The Numberlys, an imaginative picture book about how the alphabet came to be. Five friends decide their orderly existence needs something different, something MORE, than the ten numbers. A series of wordless spreads show the friends hammering and welding beams into letters, until they’ve created all 26. Suddenly things have names (jellybeans! pizza!), and the gray palette of the artwork bursts into color in a joyful celebration of letters and words. The Numberlys is less an alphabet book and more about having the courage to innovate—to think outside the box in a world that encourages strict rule-following and sameness. This message even shines through in the book’s design; the interior plays with text placement and the orientation at which the reader has to hold the book, and the jacket is a transparent material printed with silhouettes of the characters and the book title. A unique and beautiful offering for young makers, thinkers, and innovators.

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