Color by Ruth Heller (Ages 4+)

Color by Ruth Heller (Ages 4+)

Heller, Ruth. (1995). Color.  New York: Scholastic.

Genre: Picture Book

This is a book about color and all you can do with color. It starts out describing what colors can make, paintings, pictures, and canvases. Then it talks about printers and how they make colors. It moves on to talk about the colors themselves, primary, secondary- it is interactive because you can make the colors appear and disappear with a clear colored sheet in the book. The book uses student created art as well as illustrations by the author. The book uses vocabulary words pertaining to art but uses descriptions and definitions to teach students the meanings. There is a really neat piece in the end of the book on complementary colors and interacting with the colors in a way that they switch places.

This is an toy book for students. The students can move different pages in the book to make new colors and see what the differences between complementary colors and secondary colors are and how they are made. The end of the book has an activity to go with complementary colors. By using toy books children are being stimulated in language, cognitive, personal and social development. They also allow children to express their happiness towards the ideas displayed in the book (Norton, 164).

Language Development- Students of ages 2-5 are curious about their world and how language represents the words and things around them. A good way to learn about that language is through picture and toy books that allow the students to explore and learn about their surroundings. This book can be used at a basic level but also includes words and descriptions that can be taken up many ages.

Cognitive Development- This book allows students to use the toy book aspect to construct meaning of how colors go together to make new colors. Students in this age range want to have the opportunity to learn and find the correct parts of a picture. Concepts are becoming more important at this age and children are increasing their ability to group and find characteristics. This book provides them with the concept of colors as well as several concepts within color, so the book can be taken at a surface level for beginners or at a deeper level of understanding for faster or more advanced readers.

Concept Books- This book as basic concepts such as colors but also goes deeper and conceptualizes the colors into more categories. This level book could be used at a beginner level if you decided to focus on a part not the whole of the book.

Mini Lesson- This would be a good into to an art project because it shows many different things you can do with colors.

Enjoyment- Age 4+ would enjoy this book, however some of the concepts are higher level thinking so it depends on what you are planning on doing with the book before reading it to students.