French-Canadian illustrator and picture-book author Isabelle Arsenault presents the NATO phonetic alphabet - officially known as the International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet, it was adopted in the 1950s to aid clarity in voice messages and communication - in this beautifully-illustrated picture-book. Each two-page spread of this unusual alphabet book features the designated word for that page's letter - Alpha for A, Foxtrot for F - on the left-hand side, and an illustration of the word in question on the right.

Although I often have mixed reactions to alphabet books - they tend to bore me, unless they do something unusual - I picked up Alpha with some anticipation, as I am a great admirer of Isabelle Arsenault's artwork. I appreciated the fact that this is not simply an alphabet book, but a specific kind of alphabet book, one devoted to the NATO phonetic alphabet that one so frequently hears being used in military movies and television shows. I thought that this was an unusual approach to the form. The illustrations were lovely, and I thought some of the illustration ideas - boxing gloves for M/Mike, a clear reference to Mike Tyson - were quite creative. Visually, I particularly liked those pages (J for Juliet, R for Romeo) on which an item was depicted (a bottle, a knife), with a shadowy human figure contained within. Recommended to fellow Arsenault fans, and to anyone looking for unusual picture-books. ( )