No One Owns the Colors

by Gianna Davy, Brenda Rodriguez (Illustrator)

Overview

Bookstagang Best of 2023 Picture Book Award Winner | Best Read Aloud

2024 CIPA EVVY AWARDS WINNER | BRONZE

For every young artist scolded for using the “wrong” color crayon, every boy teased for wearing a pastel shirt, every girl denied blue shoes, here’s the perfect response: All colors are for everyone. Just ask Nature!

No One Owns the Colors is a lively celebration of self-expression and a bolstering invitation to advocate for your special uniqueness.

The unnamed and non-gendered narrator shows us that colors are simply part of our natural world. No bit of the spectrum—from pink and blue to scarlet and chartreuse—is meant to be claimed by any one gender or being or culture. Color is not something that can be right or wrong, or better or worse.

Inspired by school yard experiences of the author's own children, this melodic, rhythmic text provides the words and the confidence readers may need if someone says that their color—be it skin, shirt, shoes, or simply the crayon they love most—is wrong.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781951412968
Publisher:	The Collective Book Studio
Publication date:	02/07/2023
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	8.30(w) x 9.80(h) x 0.50(d)
Lexile:	AD610L (what's this?)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

A professional ballerina by age 16, Gianna Davy adventured her way across stages for 15 glorious years until settling down to start a family. Today she lives in Healdsburg, CA where she works as a Speech Language Pathologist, teaches dance, makes jewelry, hugs her children, and belts out karaoke in the car. She is the author of No One Owns the Colors and loves traipsing across misty hillsides, collecting odd words, and the notion that life and art are inseparable. She hopes that How Do I Wonder? will inspire curiosity and wonder in everyone who reads it.

Brenda Rodriguez is an illustrator and designer with a love for picture books, comics, stickers and other printed media. She showcases her love for visual storytelling through colorful and whimsical illustrations that are influenced by her own life and her favorite fantasy stories. She is originally from Miami, but after graduating from Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA in Illustration, she now lives in Washington, DC, with her partner Gabe and her orange tabby cat, Sherbert. She is the illustrator of No One Owns the Colors.

Editorial Reviews

"No One Owns the Colors is an engaging, brightly illustrated children’s book celebrating the beauty of all colors and the parts they play in our lives. This book can be used as a conversation-starter for parents wanting to introduce this important concept of the value of diversity to their young kids."

Jill C. Dardig

"Well-suited and boldly colored illustrations bring the text to life and could have children reaching for the biggest box of crayons they can find to capture all the colors that are a part of their own identities. Combining nature and self-expression, this title will be useful for all collections and should spark lively discussions with children and even older elementary readers."

School Library Journal

"Throughout, singsong text takes a circular approach to celebrating Earth’s variety of hues, and images and words jointly pay tribute to the way the natural world and its many colors can unite."

Publishers Weekly

"Throughout, singsong text takes a circular approach to celebrating Earth’s variety of hues, and images and words jointly pay tribute to the way the natural world and its many colors can unite. Ages 4–8." —Publisher's Weekly

"Well-suited and boldly colored illustrations bring the text to life and could have children reaching for the biggest box of crayons they can find to capture all the colors that are a part of their own identities. Combining nature and self-expression, this title will be useful for all collections and should spark lively discussions with children and even older elementary readers." —School Library Journal

From the Publisher

2022-11-29
A rhyming text about colors and genders.

“If pink is for girls,” this book begins, “then it’s also for squirrels, because no one owns the colors.” The following assertion, “They say blue is for boys? / Well that just annoys, / because no one owns the colors,” sets up 28 similar pages, explaining how colors ranging from chartreuse to mocha to fuchsia all exist in nature but not within strict human gender binaries. Children are provided with scripts for how to respond if anyone tries to convince them otherwise, but it’s cringe-inducing to imagine a young person responding to a bully with “Do ocean waves argue / with sky over blue? Do chameleons have / only one color to use? Does red avoid yellow / and try not to touch? Or do they unite to make / neon orange crush!” or with “The trees and the frogs / and the blue ocean spray, / they all share their colors, / the dark ones and light, / and so do the rainbows / that dress the sky bright.” The unceasingly chipper tone, faulty meter, and relentless march of colors make this an exhausting read-aloud and, if shared among children with no preconceived notions about colors and gender, might even introduce bias rather than remove it. Rodriguez’s illustrations center on a tan-skinned child; other characters are diverse. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A less than successful effort to get readers rethinking assumptions about colors; look at a nice rainbow instead. (Picture book. 3-7)

Kirkus Reviews