Colorama: From Fuschia to Midnight Blue, by Cruschiform, (March 2018, Prestel), $24.95, ISBN: 978-3-7913-7328-7
Recommended for readers 10+
You know how a color can evoke a memory, or a feeling? Maybe the color red evokes the memory of reading Little Red Riding Hood as a child; maybe yellow brings back the time you had a favorite pair of rain boots. Colorama: From Fuschia to Midnight Blue works on that idea; memory through shades of color. There are 133 different colors in here, varying monochromatic shades of whites, reds, oranges, yellows, greens, blues, violets, browns, blacks, and grays. Each spread includes an illustration of a color; a description of a color memory, and a full-page swatch of the color. You won’t believe how many shades you’ll find in here; it provides minds with a color palette to draw from, whether through color or through words, and it’s loaded with memory prompts for art and writing ideas. There’s something new to learn with each turn of the page: Milk owes its color to milk proteins and globs of fatty matter; shrimp and flamingoes both owe their coloring to the pigment astaxanthin, and the kiwi fruit is named after the kiwi bird, because the hairy fruit resembles Australia’s national bird’s plumage. There’s an incredible amount of information to be found in this beautiful volume!
(source: Cruschiform website, where pictures are featured from the French text)
This is a multi-purpose reference book that works for upper middle grade, middle school, and high school students that also works as a gift book for a budding artist. Appendixes include a color palette in order of presentation in the book and a thematic index that lays out colors by themes including mammals, birds, clothes and fabrics.
