The wife and I fell in love with Matthew Porter's vaguely modern, not to mention very cute, animal paintings on our recent trip to Seattle, a city where his paintings hang on walls of every store even remotely related to children like Minneapolis parking lots [that is, they're everywhere]. The paintings were on roughly a square foot of wood, and were going for about a hundred, which, while a great price for an artist's work, is well out of our price range. We ended up ordering his "Plexiglass Coated Super Magnets" from Buy Olympia instead. We just picked up the [board, not cloth as it says online] book at Wild Rumpus (also some of the Best of the Twin Cities) and we'd recommend it. Granted, Eliot is nowhere near learning her ABC's, at almost four months she does seem to enjoy looking at the pictures, which, in addition to his famous leopard, tiger, and of course the happy naked monkey (no gangster monkey, sorry), features such wikipedia-checking animals as the uakari and the quokka. It's a small kangaroo-like thing found in Australia. So yeah, as far as ABC books go, this one's a winner. I'm still waiting for ABC's by Nikki McClure.

[ABC is $8.95 on Amazon; supporting your local bookstore is an even better deal]