ALPHABETABUM

This collaboration pairs compelling vintage photographs of children, chosen from Radunsky’s extensive collection, with Raschka’s 26 flippant, three-line verses.

The late-19th- and early-20th-century photographs capture images of children dressed in their best costumes and shoes, formally posed in photographers’ studios. Radunsky’s elegant, child-friendly afterword explains that the expense of photographic images caused families to reserve them only for special occasions. Inviting speculation that these children “could have been our great-great-great-grandparents,” he suggests that the photos offer “an extraordinary chance to see what our great-great-great-grandparents looked like when they were children.” Raschka’s alliterative triplets (arranged alphabetically by the invented names of the pictured children) aim to amuse but clank more than they click. The verses contrive characteristics and emotions for the arbitrarily named children, seeming distinctly out of step with Radunsky’s respectful, historically grounded approach. At “G,” Raschka writes: “Gifted Glenda Grace / Glows gorgeously with a grin / Half as wide as her face.” In the image, a toddler in a fancy dress and big hair bow (both tinted pink) leans against a low table, her hands on an open book. Wide-eyed, she displays a tentative half-smile, more Mona Lisa than Minnie Mouse. The poems not only intentionally sidestep the cultural identities of the depicted children (mostly West European and white), but employ ill-advised terms like “manhandles” and “unmans” in poems about “Merry Margo Maxine” and “Uppity Ursula Uma.”

An intriguing concept waylaid by snark.