The Color Book

Gr 5 Up—This book explores the emotions colors can conjure up and provides several activities with which readers can explore colors in all their glory, including their various shades. Though the author announces at the outset that she "would rather not have written any words at all [because] Color speaks for itself better than words can," she devotes quite a bit of space to doing just that: talking. Younger readers in particular will be put off by the small font and the many pages densely filled with explanatory and descriptive prose. And what odd, meandering, and confusing musings these are, whose true flavor and purpose may have been lost in the translation from the original Italian. The author claims that she will take readers on a "color dance" as she expounds on her theories and proposes ways to investigate and discover colors, moods, and hues. The volume is certainly vibrant, at times appearing like a catalogue of paint swatches, and some activities are interesting, though it's doubtful that many readers will want to engage in them. It's unusual, too, that the author relegates definitions about primary and complementary colors to a section near the back; one would expect such basic ideas to be included at the very beginning of a primer on the subject. All in all, many other titles explore these topics and do so more succinctly and successfully.—Carol Goldman, Queens Library, NY