An engaging look at colors—and the emotions they evoke.
What personalities do colors project?
That’s the question Pearson answers in this interactive book, organized in ROYGBIV order, as a series of riddles. Each color first announces its dominant adjective. “I’m the loud one,” declares the first hue. Hints of the color’s identity accompany this assertion, in rhyming couplets: What connects cardinals, rubies, strawberry pies, apples, roses, and “elegant ties”? They are all red (at least, sometimes!). Are the items all “loud”? That’s debatable. Orange is “exciting,” yellow “cheerful,” green “lively,” blue “peaceful,” indigo “mysterious,” and violet “fancy”—again, up for discussion. Not every hint will be accessible to the target audience; some young readers will be stymied by references to “yarrow,” “peepers,” “lapis lazuli,” and “amethyst.” Fortunately, Chevalier’s illustrations ride to the rescue: On the page that reveals the hue in question, all the named color-bearers are depicted. The saturated, geometrically stylized, single-color illustrations render the hummingbird a solid violet, the pie crust a deep blue, and the butterflies an otherworldly orange. Among a slew of rainbow-themed books, this one gets back to the basics. It doesn’t explain what rainbows are or how they are formed; rather, it simply focuses on the characteristics that we might (or might not) associate with each hue, providing bright art to make the point.
An engaging look at colors—and the emotions they evoke. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2026
ISBN: 9781685559106
Page Count: 40
Publisher: The Collective Book Studio
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Let these crayons go back into their box.
The Crayons return to celebrate Easter.
Six crayons (Red, Orange, Yellow, Esteban, who is green and wears a yellow cape, White, and Blue) each take a shape and scribble designs on it. Purple, perplexed and almost angry, keeps asking why no one is creating an egg, but the six friends have a great idea. They take the circle decorated with red shapes, the square adorned with orange squiggles “the color of the sun,” the triangle with yellow designs, also “the color of the sun” (a bit repetitious), a rectangle with green wavy lines, a white star, about which Purple remarks: “DID you even color it?” and a rhombus covered with blue markings and slap the shapes onto a big, light-brown egg. Then the conversation turns to hiding the large object in plain sight. The joke doesn’t really work, the shapes are not clear enough for a concept book, and though colors are delineated, it’s not a very original color book. There’s a bit of clever repartee. When Purple observe that Esteban’s green rectangle isn’t an egg, Esteban responds, “No, but MY GOSH LOOK how magnificent it is!” Still, that won’t save this lackluster book, which barely scratches the surface of Easter, whether secular or religious. The multimedia illustrations, done in the same style as the other series entries, are always fun, but perhaps it’s time to retire these anthropomorphic coloring implements. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Let these crayons go back into their box. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-593-62105-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Plotless and pointless, the book clearly exists only because its celebrity author wrote it.
A succession of animal dads do their best to teach their young to say “Dada” in this picture-book vehicle for Fallon.
A grumpy bull says, “DADA!”; his calf moos back. A sad-looking ram insists, “DADA!”; his lamb baas back. A duck, a bee, a dog, a rabbit, a cat, a mouse, a donkey, a pig, a frog, a rooster, and a horse all fail similarly, spread by spread. A final two-spread sequence finds all of the animals arrayed across the pages, dads on the verso and children on the recto. All the text prior to this point has been either iterations of “Dada” or animal sounds in dialogue bubbles; here, narrative text states, “Now everybody get in line, let’s say it together one more time….” Upon the turn of the page, the animal dads gaze round-eyed as their young across the gutter all cry, “DADA!” (except the duckling, who says, “quack”). Ordóñez's illustrations have a bland, digital look, compositions hardly varying with the characters, although the pastel-colored backgrounds change. The punch line fails from a design standpoint, as the sudden, single-bubble chorus of “DADA” appears to be emanating from background features rather than the baby animals’ mouths (only some of which, on close inspection, appear to be open). It also fails to be funny.
Plotless and pointless, the book clearly exists only because its celebrity author wrote it. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: June 9, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-00934-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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