Vivid: Poems & Notes About Color

by Julie Paschkis, Julie Paschkis (Illustrator)

Overview

Playful poems and facts celebrate the colors of the rainbow in this beautiful nonfiction picture book.

Orange you sweet? Orange you plump and juicy? Orange you my favorite fruit?
Hey - you’re a tangerine!
B-lime-y.

With information about the science of sight and perception, pigment origins in art and textiles, colloquial expressions and word associations, there's so much to see in each vivid spread—a wonderfully sensory read.

- GODWIN BOOKS -

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250122292
Publisher:	Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)
Publication date:	07/31/2018
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	8.60(w) x 11.10(h) x 0.40(d)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Julie Paschkis is a painter and award-winning illustrator of many books for children, including Pablo Neruda: Poet of the People, Building on Nature: The Life of Antoni Gaudi, and Glass Slipper, Gold Sandal: A Worldwide Cinderella. A love of pattern and of folk art shows in all her work. She lives in Seattle, Washington.

Editorial Reviews

"Paschkis' gouache-on-paper illustrations are elegant, playful, and expressively variable from page to page—each spread displays a new style and mood . . . Full to bursting, juicy, never jammed." —Kirkus Reviews on Vivid: Poems & Notes About Color

"This is a celebration in text and art of words, of language, and of the spaces between and their possibilities. . . . Kids will savor it however they meet it." -The Bulletin, starred review, on Flutter and Hum / Aleteo y Zumbido

"Paschkis shows herself to be a sensitive observer of the animal kingdom, as well as of language itself, finding humor, eccentricities, and unexpected connections in both." -Publishers Weekly, starred review, on Flutter and Hum / Aleteo y Zumbido

"Endings don't get any happier than in this global tour de force." -School Library Journal, starred review, on Glass Slipper, Gold Sandal

From the Publisher

07/01/2018
PreS-Gr 3—Paschkis has created a book of color poems that also ponders the science and art of color. Fourteen poems highlight a variety of shades on the spectrum and culminate with a rainbow poem. Along the way, Paschkis shares facts and information about the colors chosen. The poems are short and clever. For purple, she writes, "I'm a Lilac Point Siamese with no fleas…I purr: I am not purrple. I'm a lilac queen, serene." She then adds, "Violet is the color with the shortest wavelength of visible light. In ancient times…it took about 243,000 snails to make one ounce of dye…that sold for three times its weight in gold. Only kings and queens could afford to wear purple." Paschkis uses broad strokes of color to create her exciting watercolor illustrations. The lively verse and intriguing facts make vivid a most appropriate name for this collection. It is sure to delight lovers of poetry as well as collectors of fascinating facts and will make for an engaging introduction to science for younger readers. Teachers might pair this title with Mary O'Neill's classic Hailstones and Halibut Bones: Adventures in Poetry and Color or Jane Yolen's Color Me a Rhyme: Nature Poems for Young People. VERDICT This picture book will draw readers in with poetry and then provide the spark that may encourage both creative writing and scientific investigation. Recommended for sharing.—Carole Phillips, Greenacres Elementary School, Scarsdale, NY

School Library Journal

2018-05-14
Poems and eclectic tidbits about colors.Although it maintains a superficially traditional approach of highlighting one hue per spread—sort of! sometimes!—this quirky colorfest is anything but standard. Free-spirited poems follow no particular structure: "Loudly, rowdy / daffodils yell hello. / Hot yellow" is the short, tongue-twisty first. A blue bear mourns spilled blueberries in patter that begs participation: "Oh, what did I do? / Blue-hoo, / Blue-hoo!" A verdant expanse exudes warmth and the "Green smell of a summer lawn. / Damp dawn long gone." A second green poem features a hilarious dragon-and-ogre food chain; equally funny, a paintbrush-holding cat offers the esoteric terms "alizarin," "cadmium," and "quinacridone" to a dog in overalls, who responds, pithily, "Red." Paschkis' gouache-on-paper illustrations are elegant, playful, and expressively variable from page to page—each spread displays a new style and mood, including a wavy, all-encompassing ocean, a sad, slightly eerie minimalist forest, and a sated pig reclining on a hillside after a mouthwatering picnic. Across from the poems sit informational tidbits: etymology of "green" from "grene" and "growan"; the more yellow plants a chicken eats, the deeper yellow their eggs' yolks are; where dye comes from. Hardcore science, including light refraction, will float over many readers' heads, but there is no harm done. The assertion that the "Himba tribe of Namibia still has no word for orange" verges on exoticization and, unfortunately, is located on a spread with monkeys.Full to bursting, juicy, never jammed. (author's note) (Picture book/poetry. 3-7)

Kirkus Reviews