What Makes a Rainbow? - Betty Schwartz

A Magic Ribbon Book
Illustrated by Dona Turner
Piggy Toes Press, Atlanta, 2000
$8.95
Board Book
Ages 3 and up

When I asked Ella what her favorite book was, she ran to her crowded book shelves and pulled out this book. And what a cool book it is!

When Little Rabbit assked his Mama, "What makes a rainbow?" she told Little Rabbit to ask some of his friends. As each page is turned, another satin ribbon is pulled across the page underneath the previous one. So Ladybug loves red, then Fox loves orange, Little chick loves yellow, Grasshopper loves green, Bluebird loves blue and Butterfly loves purple. Just add the sun, and you get the whole rainbow!

The whole ribbon concept is particularly cool, and the giant pop-up rainbow and sun at the last page turn is wonderful. Clever, clever, clever. Nice repetition and rhythm, short and interesting. Perfect for MY little three-year-old!

Tan to Tamarind - Malathi Michelle Iyengar

Poems about the Color Brown
Illustrated by Jamel Akib
Children's Book Press, SF, 2009
$16.95
32 pgs.
Rating: 4
Enepapers: Abstract brown leaves

A lovely book of poetry celebrating brown that includes family, tradition, food and home. Tan, sienna, topaz...bay, sepia, cocoa...ocher, beige, sandalwood...coffee, adobe, tamarind...spruce, nutmegt, BROWN. All written in the same format. A wonderful model. A beautiful picture book. Lovely poetry.

Sienna
Brown.
Sienna brown.
Rusty, dusty, coppery brown.

Reddish-brown mountains,
our southwest home.

Dad hears coyotes calling
I spot their sandy tracks.

Four o'clock breeze
drifts the smell of sage
across our sienna path.

Strong, unyielding brown.
Warm, abiding brown.

Keep going! You can make it!
We scramble over the rocks,
brush past juniper branches,
to reach the top and look out
across our sunset canyon,
sienna brown.

I can't show the indentations properly. Wish I could.

The Black Book of Colors - Menena Cottin

Illustrator: Rosana Faria
Tranlated by Elisa Amado
Both author and illustrator are from Venezuela
For: Any and all
Publilshed: 2006
Rating: 5
Read: October, 2008, many times
Endpapers; Black - as they should be.

What an incredible premise. A picture book written to be touched. Black as a-night-with-no-moon pages. Short white font in the lower left is all we SEE. The rest we have to feel.

Above the one-sentence of text is the sentence written in braille. And then, the entire facing page is a raised illustration...an illustration to be touched. "Thomas says that yellow tastes like mustard, but is as soft as a baby chick's feathers." Fliuffy feathers float across the facing page, lovely to see when you can get the light just right, and SO difficult for the unaccustomed, desensitised fingers to feel. "Red is sour like unripe strawberries and as sweet as watermelon. It hurts when he finds it on his scraped knee." A huge, plump strawberry attached to its vine, with two smaller strawberries as well. "Brown crunches under his feel like fall leaves. Sometimes it smells like chocolate, and other times it stinks."

The last page is the braille alphabet. I cannot feel these dots. It all feels the same to me. How do people do it? This is one of the most thought-provoking picture books I've read in a long time.