John Burningham's Colors

by John Burningham

Pictures of purple grapes, white snow, green frogs, and other objects introduce eleven common colors.

Genres: Picture Books

25 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bur...

Married to Helen Oxenbury They have one son and two daughters.

John Burningham was born in 1936 in Farnham, Surrey, and attended the alternative school, Summerhill. In 1954 he spent two years travelling through Italy, Yugoslavia and Israel, working at a variety of jobs.

From 1956-1959, he studied at the Central School of Art, after which he designed posters for London Transport and the British Transport Commission. He also spent a year on an animated puppet film in the Middle East. He then became a writer and illustrator of children's books, his first book, Borka: The Adventures of a Goose With No Feathers (1963) winning the Kate Greenaway Medal in 1963, an achievement he repeated with Mr Gumpy's Outing (1970).

Since then, he has written and illustrated many children's books. He is also a freelance designer of murals, exhibitions models, magazine illustrations and advertisements.

Reviews

[Manybooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is nothing really textually stimulating with regard to Colors, and no, considering that Colors is geared specifically towards toddlers, I certainly also did expect John Burningham's printed words to be very basic (as befits what a board book is supposed to accomplish).

But Burningham's accompanying artwork for Colors is actually quite visually intricate and pretty full of descriptive detail, with all kinds of varied and diverse objects, people and animals being shown and my one main aesthetic complaint about Colors being that for my eyes, the toddlers John Burningham draws do all tend to look a bit like little old bald headed men (and that for 1985, I also kind of find it rather frustrating that there is absolutely no ethnic and very little gender diversity being depicted within the twenty-four pages of Colors). And considering that the text for Colors is not only really simplistic but actually does not really mirror the illustrations all that well and all that much either (since John Burningham only presents the colour names and nothing but the colour names, sufficient, I guess, but also rather lacking, rather boringly one-dimensional in my humble opinion), while I do think that John Burningham accomplishes his intention of introducing basic colours to the very young with Colors, if I were using this book with and for young children (up to about the age of four maximum), if I were reading Colors to the intended audience, I would definitely use the illustrations to supplementally be textually expanding, since indeed except for the featured colour words, Burningham's writing does NOT AT ALL describe his featured pictures.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

John Burninghams Colors (It's Great to Learn Series) by John Burningham features nine colors and a very minimal text.

Burningham's detailed watercolor pictures show scenes featuring a child and one of the nine colors: red, yellow, blue, purple, white, orange, green, black, and brown. The child's hat changes colors to match each scene. My favorite images are blue, white, brown, black and final picture.

The nine color words are repeated twice and are the only words used. This appealing color book is perfect for little ones and those learning colors and color words. It could also be used for art and as a very easy beginning reader. 3.5 star rating.

For ages .5 to 6, colors, board books, and fans of John Burningham.

[Kelli Carlson · Rating 3 out of 5]

John Burninghams Colors is a fun book about colors (as you might guess). The books focus was on the water color pictures of each page. Each page has it's own special scene relating to a specific color. I thought the books attention to detail was important and it did a good job conveying each color and how you see that color in every day life. I would use this book in art or when teaching students about colors. You could ask them to choose their favorite color and draw their own picture in it like the book did.

[Janet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting format to the illustrations to immerse the child in one color at a time. Left hand page is an illustration of a single hat and the right side is an illustration of a nameless boy slinging an activity with an illustration in various shades of the color. My two favorites are the purple as we see the young boy eating purple grapes, dressed in a purple stripped shirt and purple hat and the other is green with the boy playing with four green frogs on a green table.
Fun title for the toddler set.