Q and U are letter friends because they stick together like glue. But have you ever considered relationships forged by other letters before?

Well, Lynette Teo has - and she has two delightful picture books to prove it. I don’t know about you but the pairing X and O only conjures the image of XO oyster sauce for me. Lynette was, however, able to draw connections from different areas, pointing out how the letters ‘X’ and ‘O’ can not only be found in Maths and Science terms, but also as names of musical instruments. As for the pairing M and W, you gotta smile when you read her dedication at the start of the book: For all the WOW MOMs. She then employs directionality to great effect, stating how M and W are shadow pals who make waves in the water. I like how each letter is given its own colour, which makes it easy for you to see the respective positions they take up in some funky words.

However, Lynette’s whimsical letter worlds would not have come alive if it weren’t for the beautiful illustrations of Xinnie Ng and Munyeong. The letters behave like cute toddlers, bouncing and waving and jumping with all kinds of smiley expressions. Just a joy to be immersed in these colourful pictures. Children will have fun exploring these pages and poring over the finer details.

I also picked up a teaching tip. She wrote “O serves double duty in the eerie, scary mouth of October”. I’m going to steal the phrase ‘serve double duty’ whenever I need to remind students to spell two p’s for ‘disappointed’ as well as two r’s and two s’s for ‘embarrassed’. I am not sure yet but ‘serve double duty’ could be a catchy chant that aids in memory retention for some students.

Suffice it to say that I’m eagerly looking forward to Lynette’s third book!

I borrowed these two books from the National Library Board.

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