THE SUN IS YELLOW

With help from flaps, slotted wheels and die-cut holes, a frog and, later, a clown named Kasper introduce a weepy snail to the wonders of color shades, blends and combinations.

Silencing the snail’s “Boo-hoo, hoo! Oh, if only I had a bit of green!” (or red, yellow, orange, etc.) with an “Oh, give it a rest!” the frog leads its monochrome companion past a multilayered wheel of colors and promises a “red moon” to contrast with the “cold” white and silver-foil one. Instead, on comes Kasper to expand the options with multicolored showers of rain against a white background and a variegated wheel of colors against a dark one. The plotline isn’t really the thing here, though. Most of the high-gloss, card-stock spreads are wordless or virtually wordless fields filled with daubs, bars, arcs and streaks of diverse hue. In her modernist, heavily stylized paintings, Pacovská crafts beaked figures that are either relegated to the role of observers or serve as vehicles for abstract color effects and changes that viewers are invited to discover and, with the moving parts, create themselves.

Children who enjoy watching colors at play may be drawn in, and the album also makes a rewarding technical study for developing artists. (Pop-up/picture book. 5-9)