Another picture book, this follow-up to my Pennsylvania Dutch Night Before Christmas has a four-line poem about the Pennsylvania Dutch for each letter of the alphabet, along with some explanatory text. Among the more predictable ones are “Quilt,” “Corn,” “Shoo-fly Pie,” and “Pretzels,” but I was stumped for “X” until my now deceased Pennsylvania Dutch friend, Lloyd Arthur Eshbach (founder of Fantasy Press and a science fiction pulp writer since 1929) suggested “X” as in: “The chicken lays the X.”

So I came up with “X is for eggs –/That’s how you pronounce them:/’Bring in the ecks!/Be sure not to bounce them!'”

The illustrations, much more faithful to the Pennsylvania Dutch culture, are by Alan Stacy, and the book is available from Pelican Publishing.