#64 in an ongoing series of posts celebrating the alphabet

Hungry? Roll these words around in your mouth: sip, slurp, sliver, snap!

Pretty tasty, no?

What’s that? You want more? Okay, crunch on these: crack, creak, clack!

Ahhhhh. I can tell by that big smile on your face that you’re probably a fellow word connoisseur. Hearing them, saying them, reading them, writing them, and now, eating them — words, whether short, long or in-between, are the ultimate feast.

In Julie Paschkis’s Zigzag (Enchanted Lion Press, 2023) — a zippy, juicy, jazzy hullabaloo of a picture book — we meet a voracious crocodile who “liked to taste words.” He had quite the discerning palate, too.

Harmonica tasted like honey.

Grackle crackled and was crunchy.

Flinch was sharp and bitter.

Bulb had a thick, purple taste.

All was peachy until the day Zigzag vigorously danced with his friends Kit and Kat. They swung their tails and shook their tambourines. Because tambourine just happened to be especially delicious (“like an orange, but more mysterious”), Zigzag forgot himself. Gulp! He accidentally swallowed the word with all of its vowels!

All that was left in Zigzag’s mouth was tmbrn. Talk about tasteless. But that was the least of his problems. Other foods didn’t taste good either: where was the roll-in-your-mouth flavor of a pr or a pch or grps?

Blch.

Zigzag had always loved to read, but now, all bks were brng. Even worse, he couldn’t slp at night. His bd felt too short.

Only one thing to do: get his vowels back. Zigzag set off the next morning to visit his grandmother. When he rubbed her scaly back, she said, “A-a-a-a-ah.” He quickly popped an a into his mouth. When he saw a rat out the door, he scared it with a “SCRAM!,” then snagged an e when it gave off a “Squ-e-e-e-e-k!”

He scored an i from Purvis the Pig, who couldn’t stop praising himself with a slew of capital I’s. Finally, when Zigzag showed his best friend Beansie his special Scarab Beetle, he was able to gobble up an o from Beansie’s very impressed “O-o-o-o-oh.”

With just one more vowel to go, Zigzag hit a snag. How would he get a U? Here’s where the reader comes in. Will YOU help him? 🙂

With a whoop and a whee and a yippee, Zigzag had all of his vowels back!! Call it miraculousness. Time to party. Zip zap, a gaga gala! A rumbustious ruckus and rumpus! A jubilee jitterbug jamboree with all his friends! Yep!

Zigzag rolled ‘seriously happy‘ around in his long mouth. ‘Seriously‘ was silky and smooth. How he loved the way ‘happy‘ popped against the roof of his mouth!

Then . . . Gulp! Srsly? Uh oh . . . 😀

I have used a lot of words from the book to describe what happens to Zigzag. But now, here are some of my own to tell you how much I love this story: brilliant, ingenious, clever, inventive, beautiful, ebullient, funny, emotive, whimsical, playful, joyful, dynamic. And that’s just for starters.

Julie is a master of incorporating words in illustrations, and though she has done this before in other books — e.g., Pablo Neruda: Poet of the People, written by Monica Brown (2011) — I think she has outdone herself here.

Her line work, calligraphy, rich colors and compositions are simply stunning. Each page turn is sheer delight: in addition to the words in Zigzag’s mouth, other choice, sprightly, rather cheeky words dance and gambol across the pages. They are juxtaposed for maximum effect, sometimes alliterative, sometimes rhyming, sometimes to ramp up the fun of simply reading them aloud so you’ll notice their wonderfulness. Spirited wordplay engages the reader just as secondary characters would in a good story, adding emotion, energy and movement, heightening the celebratory mood.

Kids will enjoy figuring out the vowel-less “words” on book spines and objects in Zigzag’s bedroom. And his bd being too short? The b and d together resemble head and foot boards. Yes, it looks like a very short bed! A stroke of genius!

As Zigzag acquires his vowels, one by one, the text reflects this: Glad to get back his a, then eating a tart apple and beaming once he’s also retrieved his e, and so on.

A longtime Julie Paschkis fan, I was already poised to like this book. Yet she managed to surprise and delight me at every turn. As an alphabet aficionado, I especially loved seeing Zigzag shaking consonants from a book, as well as all those artfully drawn vowels in upper and lower case emerging from the characters’ mouths as the story progresses (the double page spread of Zigzag thanking YOU with all those U’s is glorious). And need I mention how much I love Beansie the bear? Adorable! He’s pictured with several of my fave o words too: oodles, ooh-la-la, and oomph (I’ve always had a thing for double o‘s). And they’re eating hot dogs!! *swoons*

Like a finely tuned piece of picture book machinery, the deftly crafted text, hand-drawn words, and fetching folkloric drawings achieve a sublime synergy in the telling of this unique tale. What an ingenious way to make us look closer at words, to appreciate their sounds, appearances and meanings!

Backmatter includes an Author’s Note explaining that Zigzag has synesthesia: experiencing one sense with another. Julie challenges the reader to find other words, like tambourine, that contain every vowel, and she closes with this witty declaration:

I authorize you to sit on a precarious chair and think unequivocally about the pleasures of words. Just be careful not to swallow one.

Young readers will revel in Zigzag’s shenanigans, have a blast sniffing out new words, and will likely never take a single vowel for granted ever again. This book’s not just for kids; in addition to the gorgeous art, there’s enough wry wit to amuse even the grumpiest of grown-ups, as they apply their own connotations to the words.

Tickle my elbow and lasso my lollipop: Zigzag is super, superb and stupendous. Now, where did I leave my kazoo?

[**All words in bold appear in the book.]

*

ZIGZAG
written and illustrated by Julie Paschkis
Enchanted Lion Books (September 2023)
Picture Book for ages 3-7, 44 pp.
*Includes Author’s Note
**Starred Review** from Youth Services Book Review

♥️ For backstory about the book and to see all the spreads from it, check out Julie’s post at Books Around the Table.

♥️ If you haven’t already, also check out The Wordy Book, the companion picture book to Zigzag.

♥️ Finally, enjoy this video of Julie discussing her work (she was awarded a 2023 BIMA Brava Award for artistic merit and excellence in children’s book illustration).

Certified authentic alphabetica. Made by hand with fn grlng love, a, e, i, o, u, and dp dmrtn. Srsly.

---

*Interiors spreads from Zigzag, text and illustrations copyright © 2023 Julie Paschkis, published by Enchanted Lion Books. All rights reserved.

**Copyright © 2023 Jama Rattigan of Jama’s Alphabet Soup. All rights reserved.