Books at Bedtime: What Colour/Color is Your World?
Sunday, February 22nd, 2009
What Colour Is Your World by Bob Gill
The book starts with a question: “What color is the world?” and then
Suppose you asked a gardener? “Simple!” he would say, “My world is
green.”
(or ask a milkman, or a stargazer…). As you turn the pages, the black ink illustrations set against or filled in with the relevant block of colour are a feast for the eyes and a satisfying pattern emerges in the accompanying text… only to be turned on its head:
But suppose you asked an artist? “It’s hard to tell,” he would answer. “Colours keep changing. Look at this…”
The simplicity of this wonderful book is deceptive. Young children will revel in the direct speech (onomatopeias like Clunk! and Humph!) and delight in the topsy-turvy whimsy of the artist’s world, where the sky can be yellow and the ocean can be orange – and then they will look at their own world and play with the colours around them too.
There is also an interesting aside at the beginning: a note points out the British and American spelling of colour/ color, both of which are used here: “Neither is wrong nor right. They are just different ways of doing the same thing”. Hmmm, something tells me this message goes a little deeper!
This fun and engaging introduction to colors encourages young children to look at the world with their own eyes and imaginations, and probably also to ask everyone around them: what colour/color is your world? So, what colour is your world?
