The Black Book of Colors

by Menena Cottin, Rosana Faria (Illustrator)

Overview

A New York Times Book Review choice as one of the 10 Best Illustrated Children's Books of 2008

It is very hard for a sighted person to imagine what it is like to be blind. This groundbreaking, award-winning book endeavors to convey the experience of a person who can only see through his or her sense of touch, taste, smell or hearing.

Raised black line drawings on black paper, which can be deciphered by touch, complement a beautifully written text describing colors through imagery. Braille letters accompany the text so that the sighted reader can begin to imagine what it is like to use Braille to read. A full Braille alphabet at the end of the book can be used to learn more.

Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.1.1
Ask and answer questions about key details in a text.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780888998736
Publisher:	Groundwood Books
Publication date:	06/01/2008
Pages:	24
Product dimensions:	11.20(w) x 6.90(h) x 0.40(d)
Lexile:	520L (what's this?)
Age Range:	5 - 10 Years

About the Author

MENENA COTTIN studied design and illustration at the Pratt Institute in New York where she began writing books. Her most recent title, The Black Book of Colors, was selected as a School Library Journal Best Books of the Year. She lives in Venezuela.

ROSANA FARIA has illustrated many highly regarded children's books. She lives in Caracas, Venezuela.

Editorial Reviews

...unique....

Baltimore City Public Schools

The Black Book of Colors provides an excellent opportunity for children and adults to explore experiences and perspectives that are different from their own. Through the content and format of this book, readers will begin to understand the experience of a person who can only see through his or her other senses...The content stimulates the imagination...This book also has the value of teaching all readers to appreciate difference and, indirectly, the importance of inclusion. The Black Book of Colors is fully accessible to children who are blind, and it will validate their own experiences and acknowledge them as experts in reading by touch...a very appropriate 'educational resource' in the classroom...[and] a unique and innovative reading experience. Highly Recommended.

CM Magazine

...this is an elegant and artistic project, and it's sure to elicit some contemplation and discussion from young audiences...[The Black Book of Colours] offer[s] new realms to explore for visually impaired kids left out of the fun of most picture-book pages.

Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

The Black Book of Colors [is] an intellectually challenging, graphically remarkable picture book.

New York Times

...[a] most intriguing, very black book...

Globe and Mail

This inventive picture book relates the ways the unseen Thomas experiences colors...Black raised line art is set against black pages that echo Thomas' spirited imagery and invite readers to explore what it's like to read with their fingertips. The descriptive, sensory text, which also incorporates white type and Braille, combined with an innovative design, makes this book the perfect starting point for discussions on difference, perspective, and experiencing and describing the world in new ways, topics that are relevant to readers of all ages.

STARRED REVIEW Booklist

…a graphically sophisticated book…Breathtaking in simplicity, bold in impact.
—The Washington Post

Kristi Jemtegaard

…an intellectually challenging, graphically remarkable picture book in which a Venezuelan author and illustrator, Menena Cottin and Rosana Faria, ask us to imagine being blind…Apart from the empathy they encourage for those who lack the gift of sight, what Cottin and Faria have done so well is to remind readers that in life we're all in the dark a good part of the time, and that at such times imagination can serve as a third eye—the eye we need.
—The New York Times

Leonard S. Marcus

"Thomas likes all the colors because he can hear them and smell them and touch them and taste them"-but he can't see them, and this innovative picture book gives sighted children a sense of what that must be like. Color by color, readers learn yellow ("tastes like mustard"), red ("hurts when he finds it on his scraped knee"), brown ("crunches under his feet like fall leaves") and so on, but all they'll see is black. Each all-black double-page spread is devoted to one color, the left-hand page containing the simple, sensuous text rendered both in a clear, white typeface and in raised Braille letters, and the right illustrating one of the objects described with embossed lines that force readers to encounter them tactilely rather than visually. The shock readers feel will give way to wonder as they lose themselves in sightlessness and imagine the richness of Thomas's world: "Black is the king of all colors. It is as soft as silk when his mother hugs him and her hair falls in his face." Fascinating, challenging and lovely. (Picture book. 5 & up)

Kirkus Reviews