Meet our Staff: Anna!

Anna in another member of the Alphabet Soup family. She grew up in San Diego but fell in love with Seattle – both the city and the people – five years ago and now makes her home in North Seattle. She first learned about “The Soup” at Fremont Sunday Market, where Alphabet Soup has a booth every Sunday. Remembering her love for children’s illustrated books, she started spending more time at the shop in Wallingford.

Anna’s favorite book growing up was "Chickens Aren’t the Only Ones," by Ruth Heller. Both the information and the illustrations fascinated her. This should have been a big clue to her parents that she would end up studying biology and engineering in college but eventually run her own jewelry design and art business.

"Chickens Aren’t the Only Ones" combines the everyday knowledge most children have of eggs with more advanced scientific knowledge of animals other than birds. The illustrations beautifully compliment the slightly more technical side of the text through big, bright and memorable depictions of animals and their eggs. In some cases, the pictures are far more expressive than the text, showing different life stages of common animals.

Anna recommends this book for anyone, big or small, that has a deep appreciation for color and an appetite for knowledge. She also recommends it for younger children that may need some encouragement with reading and science. The bright illustrations make learning about science and animals much more visually entertaining and stimulating, and the short concise sentences help increase attention to specific words.

Meet Our Staff: Michael

Michael’s favorite children’s book is In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak. His favorite young adult books are The Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White and A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. He’s a graduate of the University of Washington and enjoys listening to public radio, creating music and riding his motorcycle. He was originally born with six toes on his left foot.