The Crab Alphabet Book

The Crab Alphabet Book
by Jerry Pallotta; illus by Tom Leonard
32 pages; ages 3-7
Charlesbridge, 2019

themes: alphabet, arthropods, diversity

A is for Arrow Crab. This skinny creature with the arrow-shaped head and body is an ocean crab.

This book is filled with crabs: skinny crabs and fat crabs, red crabs and blue crabs. Some crabs are huge – measuring 13 feet from toe to toe – and others are tiny. There are fiddler crabs that don’t play the fiddle, and crabs that look like they’re wearing mittens.

They may look very different from each other, but all crabs have ten legs – even though the front two end in claws.

What I ~~like~~ love about this book: I like the note from the crabs at the beginning of the book: “We crabs are tired of books about cute penguins, proud tigers, colorful butterflies, and other favorite animals…”

I like the note from the crabs at the end of the book which explains that the horseshoe crab may have “crab” in its name, but it’s not a crab! “We didn’t want our own book because we’re selfish,” the crabs write. “We’re shellfish!”

And I really like the notes the crabs write throughout the book – tidbits of information about regeneration of lost limbs, molting, and blood color. Bluish-green, if you must know. Great illustrations paired with fun and breezy text makes you want to linger over each page.

Head over to Archimedes Notebook for some beyond-the-book activities.