Children's ✦ Penny’s Take
The Handmade Alphabet
Laura Rankin · 1996
88/100
👍 Worth It
A Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor winner with gallery-quality colored-pencil illustrations that introduce the ASL alphabet through beautifully diverse hands. It serves a real educational purpose — giving children a window into Deaf culture while learning the alphabet — and the art alone earns its shelf space. Brief, yes, but what's here is genuinely lovely.
✦ Penny’s Take — this is The Review Group’s own editorial assessment. Penny’s analytical review line researched this book from real sources and scored it across the lenses shown below. It’s an honest first-party read — not a page-by-page personal one. The gold ✓ Penny Tested mark is reserved for books Penny reads cover to cover herself.
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Show the math
Verdict receipt0–100
safety98
substance80
craft95
originality85
accuracy92
hype75
age-fit90
human-eye90
Penny’s verdict88
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