Corinna Luyken (The Tree in Me) invites children to move their bodies while exploring the alphabet in ABC and You and Me, a playful, vigorous appeal to wriggle, twist, bend, point, and more in the name of imitating alphabet shapes. Luyken kicks things off by posing direct second-person questions that engage readers with their immediacy: "Can you wiggle your wrists?" Most spreads are wordless and feature people, all clad in white clothing, creating the letters of the alphabet with their bodies; each person is accompanied by an object beginning with that letter. (A key in the backmatter lists the objects.) Luyken occasionally pauses for rhyming text that celebrates not just limbs that stretch, move, and bend but also various places on the body: the belly, ankles, fingertips, nose.
Spotlighting abundant body positivity and diversity in these characters, Luyken's pencil, watercolor, and ink illustrations depict people, young and old ("From the biggest all the way down to the littlest"), with varying skin tones (and tattoos), ethnicities, body sizes, and hair styles, colors, and textures. She also demonstrates diversity in ability: there are wheelchair users, a child with orthopedic braces and crutches, a person wearing an insulin pump, and someone with a hearing aid. Luyken's graceful, flowing lines and subdued pastel colors bring a softness and warmth to the whole body-bending adventure. Learning the alphabet was never so spry. --Julie Danielson, reviewer and copyeditor