cover image Colors Everywhere

Colors Everywhere

Tana Hoban. Greenwillow Books, $18.99 (32pp) ISBN 978-0-688-12762-6

In this eye-popping book, Hoban's brilliant photographs portray the world around us as a glad cascade of colors. Pictures of underwater fish, a jar of jellybeans, market scenes and party games burst with every color imaginable. Smart compositions and super-crisp reproductions take familiar objects (ducks, dogs, balloons) and events (fairground fun, roller-skating, a walk in the rain) and transform them into high drama. Hoban juxtaposes her photos with a simple color grid to highlight those hues visible in each shot; kids will enjoy matching each colorful object to the grids, searching out tints and shadings. As the book suggests, it is easy to disregard the special value of an individual color. Here, however, the reader's attention is focused, so that each highlighted color becomes something separate and worthy of notice. Ages 2-up. (May)