Lines , Squiggles, Letters, Words — Written by Ruth Rocha, Illustrated by Madalena Matoso — From Enchanted Lion Books

"Lines, Squiggles, Letters & Words reminds us of what the world must look like to our kiddos who are still learning how to read, and how exciting it is when letters begin to combine and make sense.

'But the miracle continued to happen. Each new letter Pedro learned appeared everywhere he went.’ Literacy is indeed a miracle.”

— Natalie d’Aubermont Thompson, Living by the Page

”If you’ve ever traveled internationally to a place where you don’t speak the language it can feel a little overwhelming at first. Simple things like deciphering shop and street signs takes more mental energy than normal. Which is exactly what I remember from my younger years, when first learning how to read.

Then, almost suddenly it seems, symbols, shapes, and letters finally come into focus. And an entirely new world unfolds. One you can’t help feel a little excited about. Because now you can read every billboard and bus number with newfound wonder.

Do you remember that sensation? Experience it once again in this exceptional take on literacy and language acquisition.”

— Miranda Rosbach, My Bookbloom

A 2017 USBBY Outstanding International Book

A Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC) Choice Selection for 2017

For Ages 3 - 6

A child who has not yet learned how to read looks out at the world and sees language as such a child would: as lines and squiggles that don't exactly make pictures but don't seem to make anything else either. Then, when the child starts to go to school and begins to learn his letters, his way of seeing begins to change.

Lines, Squiggles, Letters, Words is sensitively illustrated to show how a child might see and relate to words before learning how to read. It is a smart, thoughtful chronicle of learning in action. 

It was written by Ruth Roca, who is Brazil's most popular author of children's books. It was illustrated by Madalena Matoso and translated from Portuguese by Lyn Miller-Lachmann.

Lines, Squiggles, Letters, Words is a wonderful celebration of the way words work, and a reminder than reading is as much as about visual literacy as it is about text literacy.

This will have many children looking for meaning all around them!

BOOK DESCRIPTION 

Format: New, Hardcover with Jacket

Published: November 15, 2016

Publisher: Enchanted Lion Books

ISBN: 978-1-59270-208-4

Pages: 40

Weight: 1 pound before shipping

Dimensions: 9" inches W x 11" inches H x 0.5" inches D

Rating: ★★★★1/2

ABOUT THE CREATORS

The Author
Ruth Rocha is one of Brazil's most popular children's book author, and she is one of the leading exponents of the new wave of Brazilian children's literature.

She debuted in the literary field in 1967, writing articles for several magazines on education. In 1976, she published her first book entitled Palavras Muitas Palavras.

Her current work has more than 130 published titles, 500 editions and translations to over 25 languages; also, it has sold about 17.5 million copies in Brazil and 2.5 million copies overseas.

The Illustrator
Madalena Matoso studied Communication Design at Lisbon College of Fine Arts and has a graduate degree from the Fine Arts Faculty in Barcelona. In 1999, she and three friends created Planeta Tangerina.

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

Lines, Squiggle, Words, Letters was published by Enchanted Lion Books. We love them, and they can share their vision, mission, raison d'être in a much more articulate way, as I usually as reduced to "Ooooh!" and "Wow!"

"Enchanted Lion Books is an independent, family-owned publishing company based in Brooklyn, NY. We opened our doors and published our first list in spring, 2003. We love books, well-told stories, and illustrations that open up the visual world and deepen a child's sense of story.

We publish illustrated books from around the world, convinced by the power of cultural exchange to inspire curiosity, awareness, and wonder in children everywhere. We reach across time and oceans to find new authors and old treasures to share with a new generation of readers.

We select the books that we publish with great care. We seek out those that we believe children will enjoy and that reflect an individual voice or vision.

We live with the books we publish long before they go to press, and we share them within our communities. We also sleep with many books under our pillows, and we publish the ones that invade our dreams.

We believe in the books we publish because they are beautiful and lively, thoughtful and full of feeling. They evince a fierce belief in the imagination, exploring the inner world as richly as the world around us.

Our books explore the feelings and imaginative lives of various animal and human characters, but they also travel out into into northwest Pakistan, China during the Cultural Revolution and the Levantine world during the golden age of Arab science.

We have published books from authors and illustrators in Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Finland, France, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Japan, Switzerland and the US.

Books allow us to explore worlds long before we travel and long after. We therefore seek to give children books that will help them feel that this world we share, with all its surprising, wonderful complexity and beauty, is home

As we all know, books help children to cross all kinds of boundaries and borders long before they begin to grasp the world through actual travel and experience.

We thus take as our task that of connecting young readers to the wonderfully diverse modes of expression that exist in the world, so that in the end they will feel that the whole world—with all of its wonderful, surprising and very real similarities and differences—is their home."