Review by Booklist Review
With an artist's eye, Paschkis explores individual colors on a series of double-page spreads, each offering a large illustration, a light poem, and a few short lines of commentary revealing some aspect of science, history, common expressions, cultural differences, or emotional connotations as it relates to that hue. One entry celebrates the zillion words for red, while the note reveals the ancient (and still used) sources of red pigment for paint: rust and cochineal insects. On the blue spread, the text notes that this most popular color is also associated with sadness. In the accompanying illustration, a sorrowful, blue bear sits atop a hill. Blueberries spill, rolling down from the pail he's evidently dropped, while the accompanying verse reads, Oh, what did I do? / Blue-hoo, / Blue-hoo! While the verse is somewhat uneven, most of the poems are enjoyable, and so are the brief, varied informational notes. The many lively large-scale images in the gouache paintings pull the individual entries together into a satisfying whole, while the jacket image is both inviting and expressive.--Carolyn Phelan Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by School Library Journal Review
PreS-Gr 3-Paschkis has created a book of color poems that also ponders the science and art of color. Fourteen poems highlight a variety of shades on the spectrum and culminate with a rainbow poem. Along the way, Paschkis shares facts and information about the colors chosen. The poems are short and clever. For purple, she writes, "I'm a Lilac Point Siamese with no fleas.I purr: I am not purrple. I'm a lilac queen, serene." She then adds, "Violet is the color with the shortest wavelength of visible light. In ancient times.it took about 243,000 snails to make one ounce of dye.that sold for three times its weight in gold. Only kings and queens could afford to wear purple." Paschkis uses broad strokes of color to create her exciting watercolor -illustrations. The lively verse and intriguing facts make vivid a most appropriate name for this collection. It is sure to delight lovers of poetry as well as collectors of fascinating facts and will make for an engaging introduction to science for younger readers. Teachers might pair this title with Mary O'Neill's classic Hailstones and Halibut Bones: Adventures in Poetry and Color or Jane Yolen's Color Me a Rhyme: Nature Poems for Young People. VERDICT- This picture book will draw readers in with poetry and then provide the spark that may encourage both creative writing and scientific investigation. Recommended for sharing.-Carole Phillips, Greenacres Elementary School, Scarsdale, NY © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
Fourteen color poems pair with vibrant gouache illustrations, beginning with the color yellow: Loudly, rowdy / daffodils yell hello. / Hot yellow. The poem, set inside a bright sun, blazes above butterflies, birds, flowers, and a bee, all in shades of yellow sketched out with swirls of thin black line. At the bottom of the opposite page is background information about the color; in this case, informing us that yellow is often described as the color most visible to humans. Then follow poems celebrating orange (Orange you sweet?), red, pink, purple, indigo, and so on. Purple features a regal Siamese cat wearing a long purple train; Indigo a diver plunging into a deep blue lakebut whatever the picture, each color is deeply saturated and luscious. Paschkis switches up her approach on some pages: one poem titled Red to Pink retells the folktale Jack and the Beanstalk as a way to discuss expressions that incorporate colors, ending with Jack being tickled pink. The last poem is, naturally, about a rainbow, depicted as a sequence of images of different-colored foods (a rainbow picnic) set on squares of their matching colors. An authors note at the end does a good job explaining color theory, differentiating between pigments and the perception of light as color. susan dove lempke Nonfiction(c) Copyright 2018. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Poems and eclectic tidbits about colors.Although it maintains a superficially traditional approach of highlighting one hue per spreadsort of! sometimes!this quirky colorfest is anything but standard. Free-spirited poems follow no particular structure: "Loudly, rowdy / daffodils yell hello. / Hot yellow" is the short, tongue-twisty first. A blue bear mourns spilled blueberries in patter that begs participation: "Oh, what did I do? / Blue-hoo, / Blue-hoo!" A verdant expanse exudes warmth and the "Green smell of a summer lawn. / Damp dawn long gone." A second green poem features a hilarious dragon-and-ogre food chain; equally funny, a paintbrush-holding cat offers the esoteric terms "alizarin," "cadmium," and "quinacridone" to a dog in overalls, who responds, pithily, "Red." Paschkis' gouache-on-paper illustrations are elegant, playful, and expressively variable from page to pageeach spread displays a new style and mood, including a wavy, all-encompassing ocean, a sad, slightly eerie minimalist forest, and a sated pig reclining on a hillside after a mouthwatering picnic. Across from the poems sit informational tidbits: etymology of "green" from "grene" and "growan"; the more yellow plants a chicken eats, the deeper yellow their eggs' yolks are; where dye comes from. Hardcore science, including light refraction, will float over many readers' heads, but there is no harm done. The assertion that the "Himba tribe of Namibia still has no word for orange" verges on exoticization and, unfortunately, is located on a spread with monkeys.Full to bursting, juicy, never jammed. (author's note) (Picture book/poetry. 3-7) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
