Shulman, Mark. illus. by Tamara Petrosino. AA Is for Aardvark. Sterling, 2005. ISBN 978-1402728716 32 pp. $

**

Sterling Publishing branches out into picture books with this innovative alphabet book focusing on words with double letters such as aardvark, trekking, egg and puzzle. The concept is reinforced with the illustrations; for example, the illustration for DD is a bear driving through the puddle: ducks swim in puddles surrounded by signs reading “No WaDDling in the MiDDle of the MuDDy Road,” while J is for “Just Jacks” an image of two jackrabbits on cards and NN is for buNNy standing next to a tin of carrots labeled “SoNNy’s CaNNed DiNNer.”

Clearly, the kids who get the jokes will be the ones who already know the alphabet–so who is this title really for? Some letters are a stretch, such as WW for http://www.kitty.cat, OO for toodle-oo and VV for skivvies. The illustrations are cartoony and sometimes clever and amusing, but neither the writing or illustration stands out beyond mediocre. An optional purchase.