Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault

Hey, Story Seekers!

Twenty-six lowercase letters have decided to climb a coconut tree.

All of them.

At once.

Nobody has checked the tree's weight limit.

This is going exactly where you think it's going.

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, written by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault and illustrated by Lois Ehlert, takes the alphabet, gives it a beat, sends it scrambling up a tree, and waits for gravity to get involved.

Gravity does not disappoint.

Readit would like to know why Z watched twenty-five other letters climbing the same coconut tree and thought, "Yep. Room for me."

Readit has identified the structural problem.

Book Breakdown

It starts with A.

A tells B.

B tells C.

They're going to meet at the top of the coconut tree.

Then D comes.

And E.

And F.

You know how the alphabet works.

Pretty soon every lowercase letter is racing up that poor tree while Martin and Archambault keep the whole thing bouncing forward on rhyme, repetition, and that chant.

The question isn't whether something is going to happen.

Look at the title.

Something is absolutely going to happen.

The fun is getting there.

The letters pile higher and higher. The coconut tree bends under the load.

Then.

Boom.

Everybody comes down.

Now the uppercase letters arrive as the grown-ups, the older relatives, sorting out the lowercase crowd after the crash. Some of the little ones have bumps and bruises. One has a stubbed toe. Another a black eye. T ends up with a loose tooth.

Apparently alphabet climbing is not covered by insurance.

Eventually everybody gets patched up, the day winds down, and you might reasonably assume the letters have learned something.

Then A starts talking about climbing the tree again.

Of course.

Lois Ehlert's illustrations are a huge reason this works.

There aren't elaborate faces on these characters. The letters themselves are the characters. Ehlert works in bold cut-paper shapes and strong colors against simple backgrounds, so a young child can actually follow the alphabet as it moves.

That matters more than it sounds.

If you're making a book to help children recognize letters, hiding those letters inside a visual circus would be a strange choice.

Ehlert does the opposite.

The coconut tree is big and graphic. The alphabet is bright. The pages stay readable even as more and more letters arrive.

Then comes the pileup.

Now the orderly alphabet is a heap.

That's funny to look at, and it's also smart. Children know these letters usually stand politely in a row.

Not today.

For teachers and librarians: Lexile AD530L · Guided Reading Level L · DRA 20-24 · 40 pages. Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 1989. The publisher lists ages 4 to 8, though plenty of families start it a good deal earlier.

Jungle Jimmy's Journal

This book has a beat before it has a plot.

That's not a criticism.

That's the engine.

Read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom the way you'd read instructions for assembling a bookshelf and you've missed half of it.

You have to find the rhythm.

Once you do, the words start carrying you. Then the kids hear the repeated parts and realize something wonderful.

They have a job.

That's gold in a read-aloud.

You don't have to stop and announce, "Children, please participate now."

Nobody wants that meeting.

Just leave a little opening when the refrain comes around.

They'll find it.

And when I say they'll find it, I mean they will take it from you entirely. One reader described singing the book with a six-year-old who "provided an energetic series of CHICKA CHICKA BOOM BOOMS!!! every now and then...occasionally when they weren't even on the page."

Occasionally when they weren't even on the page.

That's a kid who has stopped being an audience.

Here's the cleverest thing about it, though.

This is absolutely an alphabet book.

But it doesn't behave like one.

There's no "A is for apple, B is for bear" march down the page.

The alphabet has gotten itself into trouble.

Now there's a reason to keep going from A to Z, and it isn't because a grown-up said so.

As a performer, I also like that the story gives you somewhere to build. The letters keep climbing. The tree keeps filling. The chant keeps coming back.

You know the crash is coming.

Don't hurry it.

Build the crowd.

Build the rhythm.

Let that tree suffer.

Then give the boom somewhere to land.

The only thing I'd watch is speed. Once you catch the rhythm, it's tempting to blast through the book like an auctioneer selling coconuts. Go slow enough for kids to actually see Ehlert's pictures, especially after the fall.

That's where the alphabet stops being a sequence and becomes a bunch of individual little disaster victims.

Poor T.

That tooth had a family.

Readit's Review

I would climb the tree.

But I would go BEFORE everybody else.

Maybe A had the right idea.

If I got there first, I would sit at the top and when B came up I'd say, "Tree's full."

Because once you get to like M, you should know something bad is happening.

The tree is BENDING.

Why is Z still coming?

Z, LOOK AT THE TREE.

My favorite part is when everybody falls because all the letters are in a giant mess.

I also like finding the hurt ones afterward.

A loose tooth would be annoying.

A black eye is worse.

I think the grown-up capital letters should put up a sign that says:

NO MORE THAN 10 LETTERS IN TREE.

Except A would probably climb it at night anyway.

A is trouble.

What Others Think

After more than three decades, readers are still making noise about this one. Goodreads shows 4.27 out of 5 from 173,423 ratings, with about 5,370 written reviews.

The best evidence for a read-aloud isn't praise. It's wear.

Whitney Erwin: "I've read it to both my daughters so many times that I don't even have to look at the words anymore to read it. We are on our 2nd copy of the book because my oldest daughter wore the first copy out."

Her grandmother read it to her. She reads it to her daughters. A copy has physically died in service.

Becca gets at the same thing in eight words: "Excellent. Vibrant, helpful, fun to read. This really holds up."

And Jenny Long, who is having a bigger experience with an alphabet book than most of us: "Holy Moly! This book blew my socks off. I won't spoil it, but I encourage everyone to read until the end."

She's not wrong about the ending, in fairness.

Now the honest part.

This book does not land for every kid, and the most useful review on the page is the one that says so plainly. J9 borrowed it in a kindergarten box from the library and reported that "my kids found it 'okay'. I'm wondering if maybe it just didn't hold their attention long enough for them to understand the story. It is a cute concept with nice illustrations, just not one of our favorites."

That's worth taking seriously, and I think it points at something real. This book runs almost entirely on rhythm. If the adult reading it hasn't found the beat, there isn't much story left to carry a child who isn't already bouncing. A flat Chicka Chicka Boom Boom really is just letters going up a tree.

There's also a small genre of adults being very funny at its expense. Matthias Everhope calls it "an exercise in futility. The letters go up, they fall back down, too ill informed to understand that the tree cannot support them all."

Which, structurally, is accurate.

Belly Laugh Scale

3 out of 5: Solid Chuckles

This isn't a joke book.

It's rhythmic chaos.

The comedy comes from twenty-six letters piling into a tree that obviously cannot handle this nonsense, the crash, the injured alphabet afterward, and the wonderful discovery that A has learned absolutely nothing.

Three feels right.

The laughter gets stronger when the room participates, especially if you give the boom some weight.

Don't toss it away.

You've waited twenty-six letters for that thing.

Use it.

Final Explorer Verdict

I'd recommend Chicka Chicka Boom Boom for preschool through kindergarten, and honestly for any storytime where children are allowed to make noise. The publisher says ages 4 to 8. In practice, families start it a lot earlier, and the rhythm is doing the work long before the letters mean anything.

It's an alphabet book for kids who don't want an alphabet lesson.

Good.

Give them a coconut tree instead.

The rhythm helps children remember. The repetition gives them somewhere to join in. Ehlert's bold shapes keep the letters clear. And the pileup gives the whole thing enough mischief that it never feels like flash cards wearing a costume.

One recommendation above all the others.

Don't hog the boom.

Leave room for the kids.

And when you reach the end and A starts the whole business over again?

Well.

Some letters have to learn things the hard way.

Apparently A has to learn them twice.

Keep exploring, Story Seekers!

Jungle Jimmy & Readit