
The Letter and the Cosmos: How the Alphabet Has Shaped the Western View of the World.

The Muse Learns to Write: Reflections on Orality and Literacy from Antiquity to the Present New Haven: Yale University Press. “ The Miners that Invented the Alphabet - a Response to Christopher Rollston.” Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections 4-3: 9–22. “ My Typographies – Graphic Design Reading“, Eye, Spring 1998, 58-63. “ Abecedaries I (in progress)“, Books On Books Collection, 31 March 2020.Įlliman, Paul. As in the app, the book proceeds in gray until the letter Z, when “THINGZ” begin to happen - “Pizza! Jelly beans! Color! Books!”. They can be viewed at work here in this clip from the award-winning app, no longer available but perilously stored on an early iPad in the Books On Books Collection.
William joyce rt he numberlys manual#
Likewise in The Numberlys, our inventor-heroes (numbers 1-5 or, in their vocalizations, possibly the five vowel sounds?) lead a similarly manual existence, albeit in a more modern industrial setting. Orly Goldwasser (Hebrew University, Jerusalem) has hypothesized that illiterate Canaanite miners may have been the inventors of the alphabet around 1840 B.C.E. Around 3000 BC, someone merged pictographic signs and phonetic sounds to begin the invention of the alphabet. Clay tokens as signs (8000–3500 BC) and then pictographic marks on clay tablets (3500–3000 BC) were used for counting units of things. Accessed 28 April 2021.Īrchaeologists and paleontologists hypothesize that the alphabet evolved from counting. Exactly what our heroes didn’t even know they were missing.Īnd when the letters entered the world, something truly wondrous began to happen…īased on the award-winning app, this is William Joyce and Moonbot’s Metropolis-inspired homage to everyone who knows there is more to life than shades of black and gray. Twenty-six letters-and they were beautiful. But the five kept at it, and soon it was…artful! One letter after another emerged, until there were twenty-six. So they broke out hard hats and welders, hammers and glue guns, and they started knocking some numbers together. But our five jaunty heroes weren’t willing to accept that this was all there could be. Exactly what our heroes didn’t even know they were missing.Īnd when the letters entered the world, something truly wondrous began to happen…Pizza! Jelly beans! Color! Books!īased on the award-winning app, this is William Joyce and Moonbot’s Metropolis-inspired homage to everyone who knows there is more to life than shades of black and gray.Although bound in landscape, the book reads in portrait.

Once upon a time there was no alphabet, only numbers… The book will be arriving in bookshelves on May 27, 2014. In addition to William Joyce as the author and illustrator, Christina Ellis will also illustrate. The Numberlys will become a physical storybook NUMBERLYS Trailer TIFF Kids 2014-0 The App The Physical Storybook

It is nominated at the 2014 Annie Awards for Best Animated Short Film. The Numberlys was transformed into a short film that first premiered at a concert of soundtrack scores performed by the Shreveport Symphony Orchestra along with selections from " Metropolis" and many other soundtrack scores from the movies.

William joyce rt he numberlys series#
Wanting something different from their orderly, black-and-white existence, they set out to devise a new way to communicate - and despite a series of mishaps along the way, they soon manage to change their world forever. Friends 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 live in a world where there is no alphabet, only numbers. In a world where there is no alphabet, only numbers, a group of friends set out to devise a new way to communicate.
