Colors Book

According to author (and NPR commentator) Ken Nordine, there are many different greens inside of green: "the green that should never've happened... the truly intelligent green... the who-cares-anyway green." Orange, on the other hand, that's a color that's "orangely out of its head." Burgundy is "FAT/burstingly burgundy so." And don't even get him started on magenta, the "gossipy, witty, well-connected" color. Nordine's multi-hued "word jazz" breathes fiery life into the quirky personalities of colors. On each two-page spread, Nordine tackles a new color with a snazzy, jazzy, hip poem depicting all its woes and wonders. Olive is suffering from low self-esteem--who knew? And silly azure, with its nutty ideas, just likes to be different. The author truly soars with his treatise on the color "flesh": "Flesh, as a color, is an awful mess." If all the flesh colors refuse to "establish a sensible sanity/ among differences... flesh, as a color,/ could be black and blue/ or even a bloody hue." Henrik Drescher's wacky and wild illustrations make use of a child's drawings from the 1930s, as well as his own remarkable and unique imagination to create what might be the first glimpses of the real personalities of yellow, purple, chartreuse, and the rest. We're confident that young artists, writers, and musicians will love discovering the greens inside the green as much as we do. (Ages 6 and older) --Emilie Coulter Read More