“Easy as ABC” is easy for us--masters...

“Easy as ABC” is easy for us--masters of the alphabetical universe--to say. To small children, though, letters can be as irritating as World War II’s Enigma code. ABC books help crack the code as well as provide an excuse for ravishing art and a tidy (if arbitrary) way of introducing themes and concepts. You’d think the world would be well-stocked with classic ABC books by now, and actually it is. But each year talented adults prove unable to stop playing around with these most crucial of all characters.

A beguiling addition to the canon is A HELPFUL ALPHABET OF FRIENDLY OBJECTS, with poems by John Updike and photographs by David Updike (Knopf: $16; ages 3 to 8). This father-and-son collaboration elevates humble items from around the house to more profound status with clear, simple photos and short poems full of quirks and charms. X, for example, is for xylophone: “Hammer it; you get/music instead of blame./What a happy instrument!/What a funny name!”

Twenty-six gainfully employed bears parade through BEARS AT WORK: A Book of Bearable Jobs, written and illustrated by Gage Taylor (Chronicle: $12.95). This collection of verse about careers for the millennium addresses the perennial worry of “What will I be when I grow up?” The careers get whimsical at times (hypnotherapists, jugglers, restaurant critics and yoga teachers), but Taylor was inspired by an NPR report on how few high school graduates really know what they want to be, and it’s hard to find books on this topic that have a sense of humor or aren’t didactic.

If kids had coffee tables, some of these ABC books would be there. Each painting in the wordless ALPHABET CITY by Stephen T. Johnson (Viking: $14.99; all ages) is so gorgeously true to life that it appears at first to be a photo, before gradually revealing the shape of a letter. These urban sculptures happen to be clearly located in New York City, but Southern California kids will be stimulated to inspect palm trees and strip malls and surf more closely.

Poet Nikki Grimes also found inspiration in the urban environment, with C IS FOR CITY, illustrated by Pat Cummings (Lothrop, Lee & Shepard: $16: ages 4 and up). This well-thought- out tour takes kids from art shows and apartments on alleys to zoos and zillions of churches. The high-energy illustrations are packed with one of this genre’s best features: items unnamed in the text, making the book into a game that can be played again and again, with a key at the back.

The season’s most unusual alphabet book is surely ADD IT, DIP IT, FIX IT: A Book of Verbs (Houghton Mifflin: $13.95; ages 3 to 7). R.M. Schneider takes the word it through 26 changes of scene, cleverly introducing 26 verbs (kick it, quilt it, vacuum it, etc.) and explaining a part of speech at the same time. Cut-paper collages graphically get the concept across.