Roar Like a Dandelion by Ruth Krauss, Illustrated by Sergio Ruzzier

This playfully irreverent alphabet book is sure to be a hit with pre-readers and early readers. Instead of the “A is for Apple” approach, the author focuses on actions, and silly ones at that. For example, the book kicks off with “Act like a sprinkler in the summer.” But what heightens the absurdity are the imaginative and unpredictable illustrations. So the sprinkler for the letter A is, in this case, the blowhole of a whale shooting an arc of water onto a mouse. My favorites are for the letter P: “Paint a picture of a cage with an open door an wait,” and for T: Try to hug yourself in a puddle.” The illustration is a pair of feet sticking straight up out of some mud. Kids will certainly be trying some of these silly suggestions (hopefully not the self-hugging in puddles) as they learn the alphabet, such as Walk backward all the way home.

Roar Like a Dandelion is published by Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins, and comes in at 48 mischievous pages.