Alphabet Rescue: 05/12/09

My children and I love the Charley's Alphabet series by Audrey and Bruce Wood. Alphabet Rescue (2006) is the third and currently final book in the series. The first two are Alphabet Adventure and Alphabet Mystery.

In Alphabet Rescue Charley's alphabet has finished their first year in school with Charley and are heading back to Alphabet City for a well earned summer vacation. While in the city they meet up with the local fire fighting squad and try their "hands" at being fire fighters. Unfortunately the hose gets away from them and they are scolded by Fire Chief F saying that fire fighting is a capital letter's job (they are all lower case).

Charley's alphabet decides to rebuild an old abandoned fire truck and make it their own. As with the previous two books, each letter in the alphabet makes a contribution to the project: the o brings oil, the p brings paint, the y paints the yellow stripe and so forth. The rebuilding of the car invites helps teach vocabulary while being a fun hide and seek game.

Many of the pages also include every single letter of the alphabet, sometimes in upper case, sometimes in lower case and sometimes in both. To make things a little easier both cases are the same color (the I and i are red for example).

The story isn't just about rebuilding a classic car, it's about young letters proving their worth. After doing a number of small rescues (rescuing the letters C A T from a tree and helping M U D wash their car) Charley's alphabet gets the chance to be true heroes.

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