Al MacCuish, creative director at London agency Mother, has created a children's book entitled Operation Alphabet.

It is part of a wider series called The Ministry of Letters which aims to encorage children to fall in love with reading.

MacCuish, who has been working on it for several years, came up with the idea when he spotted a shop sign from the top deck of a bus with some of the letters missing.

He said: “It suddenly dawned on me that the alphabet is actually tremendously important to all our daily lives. But apart perhaps from crossword fans and typographers, the vast majority of us take it for granted. All except children.

"For a few years at the beginning of their lives, the Alphabet is incredibly important to children. Letters suddenly become new words, and those new words begin to access ideas - and I thought that was quite exciting. It struck me as a really fun idea that they might actually be alive."

Published by Thames & Hudson, Operation Alphabet recounts the adventures of a top-secret government department, The Ministry of Letters, where all the letters and words in the country are created.

The story’s hero, five-year-old Charlie Foxtrot, finds learning the alphabet confusing but, thanks to the efforts of the Ministry’s Special Alphabet Service (SAS), it all becomes clear in time for a crucial test.

An interactive website, co-created with Conran Singh, has been designed to encourage children to think of the alphabet as characters, and therefore easier to relate to.

“We really excited about the chance to involve the audience in all the things we create.” Says Jim Bletsas, Mother’s head of design. ‘We’re launching a national schools competition through the site where we’re asking reception-age kids to help design an lower case alphabet for the next book in the series.”