There's a Monster in the Alphabet Book

Author/illustrator James Rumford tells the myth of Cadmus, the Phoenician prince credited with founding the Greek city of Thebes, and said by Herodotus to have introduced the alphabet to Greece, in this engaging picture-book. Using the alphabet - a transliterated form of the Greek alphabet, that is - as his organizational structure, Rumford relates how Cadmus, at the instruction of the gods, followed an ox to the site where Thebes was to be built. Here he confronted and slew the terrible night monster, and used its teeth to create an army of men to help him build the city. Each portion of the story uses a different letter of the alphabet in some significant way, while also explaining its symbolic meaning, and an afterword shows the influence of the Phoenician script on the Greek, Hebrew and Roman writing systems...

As someone who studied Classics as an undergraduate, I can recall the way we looked at a chart very similar to the one that Rumford included in There's a Monster in the Alphabet, detailing how the Phoenician script was adapted by both the ancient Greeks and Hebrews, in creating their own writing systems. Given that background, I was quite excited to discover this title, which is the first children's book I have encountered to explore the history and development of western alphabets in this way. I appreciated the fact that Rumford did this through a retelling of the myth of Cadmus, as this is a fictional story that is intimately connected to the historical topic. The accompanying artwork, done in ink, watercolor and gouache, is clearly inspired by ancient Greek vase painting, and is striking. I don't know that this would be a good book to hand to a child completely unfamiliar with the topic, but as part of a larger lesson about the transmission and/or creation of the Greek alphabet, it could be very useful. It is for that purpose that I would recommend it.