A HELPFUL ALPHABET OF FRIENDLY OBJECTS

ABC poems and photos by a father-and-son team. The writer has composed 26 small poems; if not every one is tiny in length (4 to 12 lines long), then almost all of them have short lines that don't stray too far from their playfully philosophical rhymes. The poems stand in an interesting relation to the photographs: It isn't clear whether the pictures are illustrating the text or whether the text is describing the pictures. The pages are the colors of plastic toys, and this gives the book a somewhat unaesthetic appearance. But it is also what makes David Updike's very inventive photographs (featuring a multicultural assortment of children) seem so unpretentious and therefore agreeable. They look as if they were taken for a family album, but by somebody with a lot of imagination. As John Updike ably demonstrates, writing an alphabet book is an opportunity no serious novelist can afford to miss. (Picture book/poetry. 3-8)