Winston Pei 2026-02-27 Winston Pei 2026-02-27

A B See

Next on the alphabet book shelf is the first of many board books, not surprising since the expected target audience for such books is often small readers. This one is a beautiful book of illustrations and text by Elizabeth Doyle called A B See…

Winston Pei 2026-02-06 Winston Pei 2026-02-06

Beginning with A Apple Pie

So with our Butterfly-in-Chief having launched her countdown of the Top 500 Heavy Metal Albums of All Time, we figured our Head Alien – that’s me! – needed a series to motivate some more regular contributions as well. So where she’s started something music and numerical, I’ve chosen something book and alphabetical: a tour of my collection of alphabet books, alphabetically by title…

Winston Pei 2024-09-19 Winston Pei 2024-09-19

Arrrrrrrgh!

Happy International Talk Like a Pirate Day!

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The Eclectic Abecedarium

So if you’re a regular patron of the Butterflies & Aliens Library, you probably know that I have a particular fondness for alphabet books and also miniature books.

Well imagine my delight at discovering that Bruce Peel Special Collections has as part of its collection a miniature edition of The Eclectic Abecedarium by Edward Gorey…

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Proof of Life…

So, yeah, it’s been another hot minute since we’ve added something the stacks here at the Butterflies & Aliens Library but life is like that sometimes. And while we’re still in the thick of things, we thought we’d better pop our heads up and at least say hi…

Winston Pei 2022-08-09 Winston Pei 2022-08-09

Finally, time for some summer reading…

Yeah, it’s been a hot minute, but between work and school and life we here at the Butterflies & Aliens Library may have gotten a bit sidetracked from our (ir)regularly scheduled additions to our digital stacks.

But we have not forgotten you, beloved patrons!

Winston Pei 2021-11-13 Winston Pei 2021-11-13

Happy World Kindness Day!

Just a quick share of a book cover from our alphabet collection, and the letter of the alphabet that happened to stand out most today, in honour of World Kindness Day.

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A Happy Butterflies & Aliens Halloween!

Nope, no way we could let our very first Butterflies & Aliens Halloween go by without posting something! Not when there are so many Halloween-themed books over which our Head Alien and Butterfly-in-Chief bonded!

Winston Pei 2021-10-31 Winston Pei 2021-10-31

Starting with our ABCs…

We wrote in a past post about the challenges of alphabetizing our collection of alphabet books, and have since continued to acquire more items. Rather than manually updating the list of books from that post, we decided to experiment with an online cataloguing tool, a project we alluded to in our recent post about The Organization of Information. And how best to start any project? You start with your ABCs…

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Alphabetizing your ABCs

So the bookish weirdness that we embrace here at the Butterflies & Aliens Library means that, among other things, Recreational Shelf Organizing borders on a competitive sport. It definitely ranks as a beloved pastime. The who, what, and wherefores of how we sort, store, and display our bookish collections provides much fuel for discussion and debate, as well as hours of entertainment.