Monsters Love Colors

PreS-K—Bloblike monsters in primary hues energetically scribble, mix, dance, wiggle, and otherwise enjoy playing with color. Each creature makes a statement about what its color stands for, without any particular logic: why red is the color of snore, yellow the color of growl, and blue the color of nibble are not explained. The primary colors offer to make new ones for some little gray monsters and produce orange, green, and purple in turn. On the final page, they pull together a rainbow, but while the colors are in the proper order in the word rainbow, the illustration shows red followed by yellow, not orange. Better books that describe the color-mixing process include Ellen Stoll Walsh's Mouse Paint (Harcourt, 1989) and Arnold Lobel's The Great Blueness and Other Predicaments (Harper & Row, 1968).—Grace Oliff, Ann Blanche Smith School, Hillsdale, NJ