Orange Is an Apricot, Green Is a Tree Frog

by Pascale Estellon

Overview

A Bank Street College of Education Best Children's Book of the Year
 
Orange Is an Apricot, Green Is a Tree Frog inspires young learners' curiosity in nature and language through the simple joy of connecting words and pictures through colors. Yellow looks like a daffodil and a dahlia, a lemon and a chick. Blue looks like a dragonfly and an iris, a blue tang and a bluebird. Pascale Estellon's wonderfully detailed gouache illustrations bring the many shades of red, orange, yellow, blue, green, black, and white to life and serve as a beginner's field guide to new words and new worlds. Children will expand their vocabulary and delight in seeing words they already know while learning the names of new animals, plants, and fruits and vegetables through their hues.
 
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781648960147
Publisher:	Chronicle Books
Publication date:	03/30/2021
Pages:	34
Product dimensions:	9.15(w) x 12.15(h) x 0.35(d)
Age Range:	3 - 6 Years

About the Author

Pascale Estellon is an author and illustrator based in Brunoy, France, near Paris. Estellon worked in children's book publishing for Mila Éditions for more than fifteen years before becoming a full-time illustrator. Her activity books, including The Giant Play and Learn Book, have been enjoyed by children everywhere who delight in creativity and in learning about the natural world.

Editorial Reviews

"Spare text, lovely pictures, and sundry flowers, vegetables, wildlife, and more showcase both the color spectrum and nature’s diversity....The vibrant visuals and consistent format have appeal, and children will enjoy recognizing and identifying some familiar items and have their interests piqued by others."
– Booklist

"Fishes, feathers, birds, bugs, vegetables, fruits, and flowers populate this homage to seven colors....The vivid richness and fine visual detail will bring young readers back again and again."
– Kirkus Reviews (STARRED REVIEW)

"Pascal Estellon sorts creatures and plants by color in Orange Is an Apricot, Green Is aTree Frog, a picture-book primer notable for the elegance of its layout and the pleasing specificity of its depictions. Words are at a minimum as, in gouache paintings, Mr. Estellon presents five colors (along with black and white) as they are expressed in nature. Yellow is corn on the cob and a zucchini blossom and a delicate frond of wheat; it is a daffodil, a dandelion and a dahlia."
– The Wall Street Journal,

"

"Summer is a perfect time to read this beautifully illustrated tribute to color. Turn each page and revel in orange, green, red, yellow — the entire rainbow — then take a look around your yard and see how many colors you can find."
– The Columbian (Vancouver, Wash.),

"

"On its surface, this appears to be yet another book that dedicates each double-page spread to a single color. Yet the mastery of the art cannot be so easily brushed off....The section where the white objects are highlighted against the black background make it worth it in and of itself."
– School Library Journal Fuse 8 Blog,

"

From the Publisher

★ 2021-02-09
Fishes, feathers, birds, bugs, vegetables, fruits, and flowers populate this homage to seven colors.

This French import begins with red, as spectrums often do. A handful of floating dots in slightly different sizes and slightly different red shades sits across from a cardinal and a red maple leaf. Next, the matte white background hosts a juicy variety of red creatures and fruits, spaced companionably across the spread: raspberries, chili pepper, pomegranate, crayfish, ladybug. Orange gets the same treatment, then yellow, blue, green, black, and white. (No purple, which is fine; no brown, which is sad.) Blue, yellow, and green vary the most in shade, value, and intensity—the blue dots range from green-blue to dark indigo, the greens from tertiary lime to dark, low-saturation spruce. While the other colors should show a wider range, every spread is gorgeous, tempting and entrancing, evoking delicious tastes and nature scents. A small heap of turmeric looks like powder on the page; the skin of a Gala apple has the exquisite lines and glinting dots of a real Gala, darkening at the apple’s curves. Subtle puckers and folds paint an orange that could be plucked off the page and peeled. A gray pebble in the “white” section (this part has the only black background, for offset) could be just dried from the beach.

The vivid richness and fine visual detail will bring young readers back again and again. (Picture book. 2-6)

Kirkus Reviews