Oakley the Squirrel: The Search for Z: A Nutty Alphabet Book

Photographer Nancy Rose, who lives in Hubley, Nova Scotia, and is a retired high school guidance counsellor, produced her first “squirrel” book in 2014 with The Secret Life of Squirrels (www.cmreviews.ca/cm/vol21/no35/thesecretlifeofsquirrels.html) which featured photographs of a red squirrel, one Rose named Mr. Peanuts, who was engaged in some very unlike squirrel activities. Since then, she has created four more squirrel-focused books with the ABC board book, The Search for Z, starring Oakley the Squirrel, being the most recent.

On the “Secret Life of Squirrels” website (http://www.secretlifeofsquirrels.com/, Rose explains how the photographs found in the books came about:

A passion for nature and wildlife, and a lifetime spent as a crafter merged when she discovered the curiosity of the little American Red squirrels who raided the bird feeders in her backyard. Nancy creates squirrel size props using cardboard, clay, and assorted craft supplies. She arranges them in miniature settings and she has created numerous scenarios on her backyard deck where the inquisitive squirrels find themselves in some rather human like poses as they search for peanuts hidden in the props.

In The Search for Z, the opening diorama spread establishes the problem. Oakley is standing upright next to a board holding the plastic letters of the alphabet, but one letter, Z, is missing. The spread’s text informs readers that Oakley “IS VERY GOOD AT FINDING THINGS” and that “TODAY HE IS SEARCHING FOR THE LETTER Z!”. Readers then get to follow Oakley through his day as he searches throughout the rooms of the house for the missing Z before extending his search to the yard and then back into the house. While Oakley never does find his missing plastic Z, some ZZZ’s find him at day’s end.

Each pair of facing pages offers two dioramas with each one treating a single letter of the alphabet. Using a combination of declarative, exclamatory and interrogative sentences, Rose utilizes the target letter at least twice in each. All the letters in all of the words are presented only in upper case. The nouns used to illustrate the letters of the alphabet should, in the main, be familiar to most of the board book’s intended audience, things like CLOSET, HAT, JACKET, and VEGETABLES. However, a few, such as EASEL, FIREPLACE, NEWSPAPERS, and ROCKING CHAIR, could be outside the personal experience of some. Nonetheless, one of the purposes of a board book is to build vocabulary, and Rose’s photos clearly illustrate what may be new words for some children.

Preschoolers will delight in the colorful photos of this little red squirrel engaged in its Z search, and rereadings will allow them to more fully explore the many details that Rose has integrated into the squirrel-sized world she has imaginatively created for Oakley.