Colors

Author: Ken Nordine
Illustrator: Henrik Drescher
Published By: Harcourt, Inc. 2000
Genre: picture book, poetry
Age Range: grades 4-5

There is lots and lots of color poetry out there, but this book has got to be one of my favorites. "Colors" began as radio advertisements for paint, giving fun new descriptions for the different colors, but people liked them so much that Nordine ended up recording them and calling them word jazz and then wrote them down combined them with Drescher's illustrations and now they are a children's book. He begins with green, my favorite color, and gives green a personality, describing it as "an intellectual vibration, smack dab in the middle of spectrum," then he goes on to describe all the "different greens inside of green". Green is also a trouble maker but is put in his place by blue and yellow who tell him they could make their own green if they needed to. After green comes blue, called Azure. Next is black and white and gray and lavender and on and on. Nordine doesn't just describe your basic primary and secondary colors but names others like, olive and burgundy, and turquoise. (click on any of the highlighted words to hear a clip of Nordine's "word jazz")

I love how fun this poetry is. The wording is a little advanced so it would be best for the older elementary age. I also really like the illustrations in this book. They are very playful and childlike. They are done on what looks like graph paper with different media such as watercolor,pen, collage, and others.

For most kids, learning to identify color is one of the first things they do and most come to school knowing the basic colors, but this book provides a new way to see color. Using this book and their own imaginations students can learn about the "personalities" of color and how different colors make us feel different ways and can even change the way we see things. Students can talk about the symbology of colors, like green standing for envy etc. Students can learn about the color wheel and terms that help define color like "primary colors", "secondary colors", "complementary colors", "tones", "values", "hues", etc. Students could also look at how color can direct the viewer's attention in an art piece, like how red pops out and catches the eye first. Students could also learn about what colors come together to form other colors and try mixing colors themselves. Students could make their own color wheels and draw different color characters that take on the personality that they think that color has. Another idea would be to have the students all choose different colors and make thier own color creatures or illustrations and then work together as a class to place their colors in the correct places to create a huge color wheel.