Colours, colours everywhere by Julia Donaldson and Sharon King-Chai

Wow! What a beautiful book and a wonderful way for children to use their imaginations while learning about colours. This is a must for a family or school library. Donaldson and King-Chai, creators of Animalphabet and Counting creatures have collaborated in another stunning lift-the-flap book that combines rhyming text with gorgeous illustrations. Any young child will be enticed to open the book, with the hard cover showing a young girl in a red air balloon and there is a cut-out just right for small fingers to turn to the next page. It opens to a vivid scene of birds flying against a red air balloon, white clouds and blue sea, with a flap that lifts up to display a child’s hand holding a paint brush with dabs of many different colours. The child is then asked to imagine what they could paint or what the artist in the book would paint:

My paints are waiting in their tray.
I wonder what to paint today.

A flap is lifted and blue is the colour decided upon, with a finger sized hole to lift the next page revealing a bright blue tree frog, who will continue on throughout the story. The text is perfect to read aloud, flowing smoothly in rhyming couplets following the little girl’s adventures and featuring the colours blue, green yellow, red, white, pink, black, purple, brown and grey. The illustrations are bright and happy, the frogs and birds delightful and all will lend themselves to  children using their creativity.

Colours, colours everywhere is a keeper and would make a perfect present for a child, particularly if it was paired with a set of paints that would allow them to make their own colour story.

Themes: Colours, Painting, Imagination.

Pat Pledger