The Black Book of Colors

The Black Book of Colors. Menena Cottin and Rosana Faría. Berkeley: Groundwood Books, 2006. 22 pages. $17.95 (Hardcover). ISBN 978-0-88899-873-6. Grades K-4.

A Little Bit of Everything…

This book and its concept is beautiful! I have never seen a Braille book before, and I am certain most sighted readers of this book will not have either. I was thrilled to be able to use the Braille alphabet in the back of the book and try to learn a few letters, and I am sure the target audience for this book would feel the same. I couldn’t help wondering as I read if Thomas was a young blind boy the authors knew who actually gave these wonderful descriptions of color. I thought some of the descriptions were obscure, like chick feathers, but others were dead on. I think young readers will love the simplistic text and enjoy feeling the Braille words and the illustrations. Speaking of the illustrations; they are amazing. The feel so cool and they look pretty awesome too! I think this book would be great to use in a library or classroom for a lesson/program on vision impairments. I think kids would love to try to describe colors using others senses. I haven’t encountered a book like this before, and I just think it great! I did get confused on one page, however, because there were a few illustrations that hadn’t been described and I wondered if a blind person would know that they were. One was of abstract lines looking like grass, but before grass was defined. The other was an insect frolicking. I really enjoyed this book, however, and can’t wait to share it with other people!