When I first started reading A Coon Alphabet by E.W Kemble, the illustrations and spelling of the words were what first caught my attention.  A lot of the words spelled in the story are different from how we would spell them correctly.  I think that Kemble had the words misspelled on purpose in order to convey  some humor and wit to the audience reading the story. The way the words are mispelled and the illustrations make the story more entertaining and humorous for children.

Kemble’s illustrations provide the story with substance, because it makes it easier to picture what is happening in each letter. For example, the letter ‘D’ says “D is for Didimus what blew down a gun; now he and his sister ain’t havin’ much fun.” If there was not a picture depicting what was happening, we would not know what Kemble meant by “ain’t havin’ much fun.” However, because there is a picture it shows us that the gun exploded and that Didimus and his sister are extremely shocked and it looks like Didimus is flying up in the air from the impact. Most of the people in the story and the animals are drawn to resemble cartoons, which makes the story more fun and easier to understand for children.

I also noticed that almost all of the letters are the first letter in the people’s names. Kemble uses the letters to introduce the people he talks about. The story is humorous and full of wit, because it seems that all the characters start off doing something not that special, only to find themselves encountering a funny situation or accident. For example, “L is fo Lulu what was coasting so fine till she hit a board fence and got mixed wid de swine,” shows us that Lulu is minding her own business and riding her bike and then all of a sudden she runs into a fence and falls into some pigs.

Kemble’s combination of using funny cartoon drawings and misspelled words, make this story more fun for children and easier for them to understand, since they can have a visual in their mind of what is actually occurring.