A Very Silly Alphabet began life as a collection of silly rhymes that I made up to share with my grandchildren.  I quickly realized that they had a value beyond amusing the children. My grandchildren do not have English as their first language. They have been bilingual from birth, but their schooling is primarily not in English. As they begin to learn to read, the transition between the sounds represented by letters in each language is difficult. My hope was that my rhymes would be an element in scaffolding English sounds for them. So I set myself the challenge of creating a rhyme for each letter of the alphabet focusing on their key sound (some letters have more than one sound!) ... it was a lot easier to come up with the idea than the rhymes!

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The fact that this book is a reality is thanks, in no small part, to a writers camp arranged by the Sherbrooke Village Writers Guild and held at Sherbrooke Village, Nova Scotia, in 2018. The support and encouragement I received at that camp, and the opportunity it gave me to work with Sheree Fitch, Clary Croft and Harry Thurston were of immeasurable value to me. I owe everyone involved a huge debt of gratitude.

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Sarah Shortliffe was chosen by Nimbus to illustrate the rhymes and I believe her pictures capture the spirit perfectly and I am very grateful to Nimbus for choosing to use her work.

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Hopefully children and adults will enjoy these rhymes, they really need to be said out loud - so go ahead and have fun!

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I have a sneaking feeling that adults learning English as another language might well both enjoy and find them useful too.