Martin’s a true man of letters

The trend seems as plain as the nose on your child’s face, or an arrow through your head. There’s Madonna, Billy Crystal and Jamie Lee Curtis. And Jerry Seinfeld. And John Lithgow. And Katie Couric.

All celebrities. All parents. All authors of children’s books.

Now Steve Martin has written one. But he doesn’t have any children.

“I’m not sure why I did this. I don’t know why an alphabet book popped into my head,” Martin, 62, says of “The Alphabet From A to Y, With Bonus Letter Z,” a collaboration with New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast. “My idea was to write these rhyming couplets with the craziest images I could possibly think up, and then have Roz illustrate them.”

Flying Dolphin Press, an imprint of Random House Inc., is releasing the book with a first printing of 150,000. It is a nonsense ride across time and rhyme, with highlights including “H” (“Henrietta the hare wore a habit in heaven/Her hairdo hid hunchbacks: one hundred and seven”) and “N” (“Needle-nosed Nigel won nine kinds of knockwurst/By winning a contest to see who could knock wurst”).