We may have never met, but we are already hard at work on a collaborative project together. This particular team effort is so vital to everyday life that we forget it even exists. It shapes our experiences and molds our behaviors. It is at the core of our identity as a species.

We call this collaboration "language."

You may think of language more in terms of communication rather than collaboration, but the simple truth is that, if we don't agree on the meaning of sounds and the letters that represent them, then language can't exist. That consensus, reinvented and reaffirmed repeatedly over millennia, is our oldest and most layered collaboration, and it begins with the alphabet.

A Is for Angelfish is the beginning of Baby Sees ABCs, a collection of paintings I made to celebrate our epic cooperation. The series and the book that it became were crowdfunded, garnering the support of 83 people who chose which animals represent each letter and who also provided many of the first names which are embedded in each of the images. These names serve as tools for letter recognition, but they are more than that too. They are proof that we are not alone. We exist as part of a larger community connected by language and by our extraordinary ability to work together.

Baby Sees ABCs invites kids first to learn their alphabet and then to look again: at the art and at how it came about, but also at the animals and at how humans are just one among many species enjoying this earth.

When we focus on the collaborative aspect of language, we aren't just raising children who will appreciate the value of working together. We are helping the next generation to create a kinder, more thoughtful future.