Great Blueness and Other Predicaments

by Arnold Lobel

The tale of the Wizard who brought color to the world

Genres: Picture Books, Childrens, Fiction, France

Library Binding

First published October 28, 1968

About the author

Arnold Stark Lobel was a popular American author of children's books. Among his most popular books are those of the Frog and Toad series, and Mouse Soup, which won the Garden State Children's Book Award from the New Jersey Library Association.

Reviews

[Leslie]

One of my all time favorite kids books. It is funny and it teaches a lot of things on all different levels and the art is fantastic!!!

[Cheryl]

Openlibrary.org.
"Trees were blue. Bees were blue. Wheels and evening meals were blue."
"At last the world was too beautiful ever to be changed again."

Rounded up to five stars. When I was a girl this would have been my favorite treasure.

[Michael Fitzgerald]

In my printing, the red leans a bit too much to the pink, but otherwise, this is a lovely book and the predictable full-color pages are glorious.

[Orion Kopf]

I stayed awake for this whole book!

[Gwendolina Halgand Monmalier]

Un très jolie livre pour enfant sur l'apprentissage de la couleur

[David Avery]

This book is a gold nugget for a children's picture book. Its underlying message is one of appreciation for variety and diversity, and tells this message in an entertaining way with colors, magic, and wizards. It's not too short and not long, and tells the story of a Wizard who creates color for a boring black and white world, but will not be stopped until the world is filled with a variety of colors. Anybody could enjoy this story. Five out of five stars.

[Nicole Maendel]

My library kindly ordered this book for us. My son loved it 🌟 It shares an engaging and important message about how the presence of color and variety enriches and impacts our lives and the way we experience the world.

[Augurey]

Je me rappelle de la première fois que j'ai lu cette merveilleuse histoire, sur les bancs de l'école primaire quand on apprenait la conjugaison du passé simple et composé, une leçon qui figurait dans la partie des contes et des histoires.
Je me rappelle avoir feuilleté le livre scolaire, et en la lisant, j'ai eu le déclic pour écrire mes propres histoires.
Le professeur de Français me demandait toujours de lire, je ne peux guère trouver les mots pour décrire mon bonheur quand je lis.
Les années défilent, et aujourd'hui, je me suis rappelée de cette histoire, je l'ai cherché et voilà que la nostalgie a enveloppé mon cœur et âme.
C'est une histoire fanatique pour les enfants, je trouve qu'elle est bénéfique pour inspirer les petits a écrire leurs propres histoires, et d'essayer de créer en expérimentant, comme le magicien a pu le faire.

[Min]

The entire World is Grey; everything is Grey. It is the Great Greyness. The Wizard decides something isn't right here, so he goes to his Grey cellar and mixes potions until a color appears. He names it blue. Everyone wants it, so he paints everything. They love it, but then everyone becomes sad. He tries again. Now yellow. It is good, but then it is too bright. Again he tries. Now Red. It is good, but then everyone is angry.
The Wizard runs to the cellar to create more colors, but only blue, yellow, and red appear. Then .. some overflowed and made a mess. The Wizard had the answer by mixing the colors together. He created purple, green, orange, and brown. He insisted the people take all of the colors.
The world became a very colorful place

[Kaylee]

"The Great Blueness," is a story about a colorless world and how a wizard helps that colorless world become colorful. We navigate with the main character, the Wizard, and how he is able to help his community through the creation of color. However, the community has complaints and suggestions. We are able to see every working process of problem-solving.

The art in this book is mostly cartoonish with very round lines. This book relies on color to reflect the main theme of the book so all the primary colors are very prevalent. We are also able to see the primary colors being mixed to make secondary colors and so on. The use of color is very impactful and shows children the importance of color and how it can affect our emotions.

[Velvetea]

I'd never encountered this book as a child but I imagine it delighted me just as much now as it would have then.
So much to find in the active, humorous illustrations. I love the style and the story is adorable~ the appeal of color-driven pages is always welcome.
The class of pre-primary students I work with have been doing a lot of color-mixing activities and they love being read to, so this book will be perfect to share with them at circle time.
I'm so glad I found it on our laundry room's "Take Me" shelf!

[Mladoria]

Un bel album sur les couleurs primaires et secondaires, sur leur symbolisme. Sur un schéma de conte traditionnel, l'auteur nous emmène dans une intrigue optimiste et joyeuse. Graphiquement très pertinent, on s'accroche davantage à la couleur aux détails denses et multiples de chaque page, mais n'est ce pas le but de l'album ?

[Sylvie Gold]

I have always loved this book, and I still do! It's a great addition to units on colors and color blending, especially for children who have already mastered the basics of primary and secondary colors and are ready for a more fanciful look at the topic.

[Abigail (Abbe)]

a very sweet book

[Kelly]

This was a very cool book. Lobel uses color to describe emotions amongst the townspeople. And the story is really neat.

[Jane]

Arnold Lobel must have been looking at that great Flemish father and son duo, Pieter and Jan Brueghel, when he came up with this delightful fable. Highly recommended.

[Guilherme Semionato]

3,5

[Gabriela Muñoz González]

Una historia sencilla y dulce, llena de color.

[John]

that was too good

[Lola _ddn]

Juste excellent, je me suis rappelé comment on fait certaine couleurs en plus!

[Heidi]

3.5 stars

[Amanda Jensen]

I loved the illustrations and they way they portrayed how happy all the people were with one color, and then how unhappy they became over time. I thought it was a cute story that can also be applied to how incredible it is that everyone in the world is different. (Picture Book)

[Derelict Space Sheep]

42 WORD REVIEW:

One day during the Great Greyness a wizard invents colour. This fairy tale starts off with grey illustrations then makes memorable use of colours in explaining how the world (after several mishaps) came to be the bright, beautiful place that it is.

[The Brothers]

A very unique story about the creation of colors. A wizard who putters around in his basement discovers the color blue in his land of black, white, and grey. Soon everything is blue which leads to problems of depression. So the wizard creates yellow, and everything is yellow. New problems abound. It continues this way until the wizard figures out how to create all the colors and incorporate them into the world.

The illustrations are wonderful.

[Lady reading under the Willow]

A tad hard on the eyes, this is a fun origin story about color. Several page spreads feature a blast of monochrome illustrations in slightly painful hues. But that makes the last page with all the colors in their proper places all the more beautiful and satisfying.

Note: the main character is a wizard who works in potions and spells.

[Mare]

Read this is preschool & loved it. took me this long to figure out the title.
I really enjoyed the transformation of a grey world to each new color...till they all get fed up of all one color & so on.

[Jonah]

blue is sad
yellow is to bright
red is mad

[Laetitia Marie]

Probably one of my favourite kids books!

[Nathan]

One of my favorite childhood books.

[Ashlee Draper Galyean]

A sweet friend worked really hard to find this childhood classic for our girl and I'm so glad he did! It felt like my childhood and the old book smells like it too.