What's your favourite colour? by Eric Carle

Walker Books, 2017. ISBN 9781406356526
(Age: 5-Adult) Highly recommended. Themes: Colour. Children's book illustrators. In this beautiful book 15 outstanding illustrators have chosen to let the reader know what their favourite colour is and have drawn a picture to illustrate this, telling why they have chosen that colour and why they love it. The contributors include: Eric Carle, Lauren Castillo, Bryan Collier, Mike Curato, Etienne Delessert, Anna Dewdney, Rafael Lopez, William Low, Marc Martin, Jill McElmurry, Yuyi Morales, Frann Preston-Gannon, Uri Shulevitz, Philip C. Stead, and Melissa Sweet and readers will be fascinated by the colours chosen and the wonderful illustrations that accompany them. Each artist has a double page spread with a usually short piece about the colour and then a gorgeous drawing in that colour.
I was particularly taken with the two illustrators who chose grey as their colour as I had not personally considered it as a favourite. Melissa Sweet wrote a haiku for grey:
Foggy morning grey
Makes other colours glimmer.
Even the gull's beak
And then gives a list of different greys and an illustration of Maine, its boats and water. In comparison the grey chosen by Rafael Lopez "dares to be different" and knows how to make the other colours sparkle and a cheeky grey octopus proves this in the illustration. Marc Martin chose crimson red because "it is the colour of the crimson rosella" and vibrant rosellas fly across his double page spread. Other pages are equally as interesting.
This book will inspire readers to consider their own favourite colours and why they have chosen them. In the classroom children could do their own drawing and writing and all readers will be inspired to find books by these wonderful artists to see more of their art work. There is short biographical information about them at the back of the book with a photo of each artist as a child and this is fascinating as well.
Pat Pledger