On Beyond Zebra!
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On Beyond Zebra! is a classic illustrated children's book by Theodore Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss. The young narrator, not content with the confines of the ordinary alphabet, invents a whole new one that extends beyond Z, with a fantastic creature corresponding to each new letter. The creatures include favorites such as the Floobooberbabooberbubs, large buoyant heads which float serenely in the water. These naturally serve as the example for the letter "Floob".
Most of his letters look like monograms of their names. In order, these are named Yuzz, Wum, Um, Humpf, Fuddle, Glikk, Nuh, Snee, Quan, Thnad, Spazz, Floob, Zatz, Jogg, Flunn, Itch, Yekk, Vroom, and Hi. The names of four of these clearly come from German or Yiddish: "Glikk" is glück, meaning luck; "Nuh" is the interjection, nu?; "Zatz" would be an Americanized spelling of the word Satz (Satzfehler is German for a printer's mistake); "Yekk" is like yecch, an interjection of disgust. "Vroom" is onomatopoeia for the sound a motor makes; it comes from the French vrombir, "to buzz." The book ends with an unnamed "letter" that apparently is a monogram of all 26 letters in the existing alphabet. It is left as an exercise in naming for the reader.
There is a proposal to include every one of these letters as a separate character in Unicode.
On Beyond Zebra! was mentioned on the first episode of The Colbert Report.
