A World of Colors: Seeing Colors in a New Way

by Marie Houblon

A World of Colors is an elegant photographic picture book, perfect for young children who are ready to stretch their minds. The book invites kids into a world where the relationships between colors and their objects are not always as expected, where bananas are not always yellow and where blue and blue and blue may be three different colors. What world is this? It’s the real world.

A combination of sumptuous photography and simple, interactive text makes this a perfect lap book to help kids make giant leaps in their observational skills. Readers are asked to find a whole spectrum of colored objects, from the expected—blue sky, green leaves— to the surprising—pink fish, blue feet. Marie Houblon gives preschool readers a grand tour through the colors of their world in lavish spreads that signal the name of the color in large type and show named objects in that color. The following spread challenges the reader to find the same color in photographs from all over the world. Thus, kids are taken on a world tour of orange, for example—observing orange tangerines on an assembly line in Japan, orange eyes in a robot toy in Britain, and orange hair on a little boy in Ireland. When the name for the color and the color itself don’t match, the text is there to ask why we see things in a funny way sometimes—like why we call it red hair. Then, the reader is encouraged to look beyond the book to identify a world of colors in their own surroundings.

Genres: Picture Books, Nonfiction, Storytime

48 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Stacy]

I can recommend enthusiastically to all kids from 2-5 or 6. Let me start with the photos – they are gorgeous, interesting and international. Each color has 4 pages and the text isn’t something the child will read by themselves, but the text makes this book interactive so it isn’t something they’d want to read by themselves anyway. For each color it asks that you look around and find something that color and because of that it would be fun to go around the house reading it in different rooms. Let me show you a few pages…

there's more on my blog... http://stacybuckeye.wordpress.com/201...

[The Library Lady]

Marvelous. It's books like this that show you how good children's non-fiction can be.

[Anne Beier]

This engaging title explodes with color and inspires very young children to notice colors in the world around them. The stunning cover photo begs readers to observe and open it, by showing two boys dressed in red hiding their faces, hide-and-seek style, on a red wall of the same shade. Only their hair and jacket trim pop in contrast. Two double page spreads are devoted to each color in the color wheel and black, gray and white, creating a small vignette about each one. For example the word blue is introduced on a blue page using a darker shade. The opposite page is a photograph of white marshmallows covered in blue powdered sugar. The next page shows three beautiful photos of blue used in various hues; a candid of a child running towards a door, and two other nature photos focusing on blue in a natural but artistic way. The opposite page wraps up the vignette with a brief explanation about how the color is displayed and asks the reader some questions; “Do you see…A blue patterned skirt? The blue light of evening? Blue water?” It ends with an “I Spy,” challenge; “Now look up. Do you see different blues in your world?” No color wheel is depicted or explanation of primary and secondary colors, which provides a one layer message, intended for a pre-school-k audience. It is an effective introduction to one concept; noticing colors in the world surrounding the child. The inspiration for this book came to the author and photographer while admiring the wide range of colors at a Parisian fruit and vegetable market. It is a great tool to use in a lesson on observation and color or while sharing in a one-on-one setting.

[Sarah]

I like this simple book about colors. It has basic information about colors, beautiful photographs (it's published by National Geographic, so no surprise there!), and encourages the child on every page to look around and see the colors in their own world.

[Nancy]

My kindergarten students and I really enjoyed this book, and they loved finding colors around them!