The Wonder of Color

by Catherine Stier, Floss Pottage (Illustrator)

Overview

A painting contest inspires one artist to learn about light waves, prisms, and the color wheel.

When Ms. Vega announces a mural painting contest at school, James can't wait to draw a picture to fill the library wall. But as he explores color, he has a lot of questions about where color comes from and how our eyes see it. As he experiments and reads, James learns about prisms, the color wheel, and light waves—all while working on his colorful contest entry.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807572689
Publisher:	Whitman, Albert & Company
Publication date:	03/01/2022
Series:	Science Makes It Work
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	8.00(w) x 10.00(h) x (d)
Lexile:	AD810L (what's this?)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Catherine Stier is the author of more than 20 children's books including the Science Makes it Work picture book series and the Kirkus star-reviewed A Dog's Day chapter book series. She holds a master’s degree in reading and literacy and has served as a magazine writer, newspaper columnist, and writing instructor. Stier resides in San Antonio, Texas.

Floss Pottage studied illustration at Norwich University of the Arts and now lives and illustrates on a ship named Iolanthe in Warwickshire, United Kingdom. She loves spending time outdoors and takes inspiration from the canal and countryside around her. Her curiosity about science and how things work fuels her illustrations and the characters she creates.

Editorial Reviews

2022-04-27
Searching for a subject for a classroom art project leads a young student to discoveries about light, colors, and paint.

Visits to a playground and an art museum, a museum guide’s minilecture on pigments and binders, and a home demonstration involving a flashlight and a glass of water fill out a sketchy storyline with some basic information about the visible spectrum. With his dad and his little sister as a gobsmacked audience, young James shows how light is reflected and refracted and also explores the relationship between primary and secondary hues on a simple color wheel—all on the way to proposing a mural for the school library’s wall that everyone in his class can decorate. That mural, along with the chalk drawings and paintings James inspects, is blandly generic in Pottage’s illustrations. Her figures are staid, too, though she uses a range of skin tones in depicting the students and teacher who join James and his family (who are light-skinned with dark hair) at the final unveiling. The dark-skinned museum guide uses a wheelchair. Budding artists may appreciate the technical background, but for capturing the “wonder,” other takes on the topic, such as Shelley Rotner and Anne Woodhull’s bright Colors (2019) or David Elliott’s Color the Sky (2022), illustrated by Evan Turk, do a better job. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Just a few dabs at the topic, utilitarian at best. (Informational picture book. 6-8)

Kirkus Reviews