Menena Cottin, illustrated by Rosana Faría, translated by Elisa Amado,
The Black Book of Colors
Groundwood Books, House of Anansi Press, 2008 (first published in Mexico, 2006).

Ages 5-10

Brilliantly conceived and executed by Venezuelan author Menena Cottin and illustrator Rosana Faría, The Black Book of Colors has been selected for numerous "Best of" lists (see below); and the original Spanish edition won the 2007 Bologna Ragazzi New Horizons Award.

From the moment you lay eyes on it, The Black Book of Colors looks different. Its pages are slick black paper, with a couple of lines of type in white at the bottom of each double page. At the top, those lines are replicated in Braille. On the facing page is a raised image, black on black, that illustrates the text. This wonderful book in Braille is really designed for sighted children to experience what it’s like to be blind and therefore to depend on the sense of touch to read.

Thomas, the blind child whose story is told in the book, uses his highly developed senses of smell, taste, touch, and hearing—and his exuberant imagination—to experience what colors are like. “Red is sour like unripe strawberries and as sweet as watermelon. It hurts when he finds it on his scraped knee.” How well can a sighted child, by just touching the raised images without reading the text, decipher the shapes of the leaves and grasses and strawberries that Thomas’s sensitive fingers use to interpret colors and images? As children touch the pages and try to feel as much there as Thomas can, the book’s beautiful poetic language conveys his experience as well.

The Black Book of Colors is conceptually vigorous, technically sophisticated, and astonishingly simple in the way of something that has been honed to the essence. Its powerful, undidactic message of understanding will imprint itself on the hearts and minds - and fingers - of everyone who touches it.

Awards: Booklist Top 10 Art Books, School Library Journal Best Books of the Year, New York Times Best Illustrated Books, NCTE Notable Children's Book in the Language Arts, and Booklist Editors' Choice - Books for Youth.

Charlotte Richardson
June 2009