This attempt to tell a sequential story using the alphabet as a guide succeeds neither as a compelling narrative nor as an effective concept book. A little boy climbs into a picture of a red airplane and takes off, zooming all around the world. At the bottom of each page is a sentence with a bolded letter. A framed illustration depicting the word that contains the bold letter is the visual focus of each page. The sentences, unfortunately, do not follow from one page to the next, and transitions are often jarringly abrupt and illogical. Facing pages' sentences and illustrations are linked, in many instances, only by the appearance of the red plane. Readers, for example, go from one page where "you see someone fishing on a lake" near gently rolling green hills to the facing page "and someone else climbing a mountain" wearing alpine gear in a setting that looks like Everest. The flat, cartoon illustrations add interest, but not enough to overcome the poor text and lack of a story line.?Lisa Falk, Palos Verdes Library, CA Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.