Nancy’s theme this week is “shifting perspectives”. Of selecting these books Nancy wrote “Although two of the stories have characters with disabilities (blind and deaf) the stories are really more about looking at the world (or one’s own experience) from a different viewpoint. And I think the story, I Feel A Foot, which is a retelling of a Sufi fable illustrates that theme perhaps most obviously. One of my favorite sayings is, “Don’t believe everything you think!” And these three books playfully challenge the reader to shift her perspective many times.”

The Black Book of Colors by Menena Cottin and illustrated by Rosana Faria.


The author and illustrator are from Venezuela and the book was first published in Spanish. It is beautiful in it’s conception and production. The pages are black with embossed illustrations and Braille underneath the lettering so the reader must touch the pages, shifting one’s senses from sight to touch. The narrator is guided by Thomas who is blind and he describes color by how he feels or experiences color. There is a great excerpt and review here. After reading this book together you can ask children to close their eyes and imagine/describe what different colors look like. Is Thomas’ world black or is it rich with color?

The Deaf Musicians by Pete Seeger and Paul Dubois Jacobs, illustrated by Gregory R. Christie



Pete Seeger is a lyrical storyteller, probably because he is a musician. He dedicated this story to his deaf father and knew that deaf people still enjoy music even without hearing. It’s possible to learn a new way of communicating through music and in this case through music and sign language. This story is about a jazz musician who loses his hearing and has to learn sign language. He starts a new band whose members are also deaf and now sign their music. This story is a really fun jazzy read-aloud. A longer review can be found at Bees Knees Reads.

I feel a Foot! by Maranke Rinck, illustrated by Martijn van der Linden.


Imagine a turtle, bat, octopus, bird and goat asleep in their hammock. Turtle hears a noise. They all go to investigate in the pitch black. What each animal bumps into and what each believes he’s found weaves a tale about differences of perspective and experience. The discovery of an elephant (who later joins them all in the hammock) is revealed after each animal has come to a different conclusion. Visually this book is a treat with its vivid colors and patterns. And did I mention it’s funny? [Zoe adds: Click here and scroll to the bottom of the page if you would like to see illustrations from inside this book]

I (Zoe) have not yet read it, but I just came across a review of The Seeing Stick over at Planet Esme – this lovely sounding book (by Jane Yolen, illustrated by Daniela Jaglenka) sounds like it would go perfectly with the three books suggested by Nancy today.

As to some music to enjoy today you could try:

Some activities which could go with today’s books include:

It was a bit of challenge for me today to come up with music and activity suggestions so if you have any that would work well with these books, please do let me know via the comments!


Thanks once again to Nancy for our great list of books today. Please do pop over to Bees Knees Reads and say hi to her and her sister!

So I’m having to get my colour fix another way, and one source of rainbow delight this last couple of weeks has been Flyaway Katie by Polly Dunbar.

Katie is feeling grey. Finding inspiration from a beautiful picture on her wall of birds with colourful plummage she sets about trying to cheer herself up. First she puts on her most colourful clothes, and although that helps she doesn’t yet feel quite right. So, Katie then paints herself – her face, her arms, her fingers, and whilst the paint is drying magic occurs.

With a fizz and a flutter Katie is ably to fly into the picture on her wall and spends the rest of the day living in colour, making friends with the cheerful, exotic birds around her, having a great deal of fun right up until it is time to return home for her bedtime bath.

Both girls (and me!) love this book. The illustrations are a tonic – Dunbar’s use of colour is most definitely what the doctor ordered for us. Stars and sparkles fizz over the pages and the birds’ feathers come in a riot of colours. Katie’s imagination and can-do attitude, as well as her body language and fashion choices remind me somewhat of Lola (as in Charlie and Lola) – a great little hero to identify with. Although a short read, it carries a great message worth reminding ourselves of sometimes – with a bit of creativity we can do a lot to help cheer ourselves up! No more complaining about the weather and the cold then for me

As soon as we’d read the book for the first time, M and I both wanted to do exactly as Katie had done – find our best, brightest, cheeriest clothes and fly away into a magical place. So the first thing we did was to recreate a picture to hang on our kitchen wall in hommage to Katie’s picture. I cut out bird shapes from card and “feathers” from multi coloured tissue paper and we all sat down as a family to stick, glue, and decorate our birds.

The final result has certainly brightened up our kitchen!

One friend saw this yesterday and commented “Hmm, not a lot of parental involvement there, then!” – but that was missing the point entirely I think – this was a great project that got all four of us sat together around the table, pottering away on our birds, helping each other, chatting, working together. The process of making the picture was more important than the final result, but of course I can’t capture that in any way.

Anyway, once we had our picture ready to jump into, next we had to make ourselves some wings. For each girl I took two strips of card about 5 cm wide and as long as the distance from armpit to wrist for each girl. I folded the card over and then glued into the crease lots of large tissue paper feathers (each about 20 cm long).

When all the feathers were in place I folded over the top piece of card and stapled it down. As soon as the glue was dry I used safety pins to attach the wings to my own little birds, and then we starting flying about!

We definitely had a good time, and felt much brighter and happier for a dash of colour, a flight of fancy and a good dance.

Flyaway Katie: *** (3 stars)

We flew and danced to:

I’ll Fly Away on the Down from the Mountain: O Brother, Where Art Thou? album

Colour my World by Petula Clark

Three Little Birds by Bob Marley (bound to cheer you up if you’re having a grey day!)

There are so many more great projects out there that involve lots of colour. Here are two that we’re definitely going to try:

When it stops being so grey and temperatures warm up enough for us to take some clothes off in the garden I’d like to try body painting – here’s a lovely post from The Artful Parent about her experience of this fun sounding activity.

Today I’m linking up with a new project – Feed Me Books Friday, hosted by Janna at The Adventure of Motherhood. If you have 5 minutes to spare do head on over there as there will be plenty of book recommendations from other parents to check out!

The curators had indeed been successful in creating a place which the whole family could enjoy, with a huge pile of brightly coloured bean bags on cheerful rugs in one corner of the gallery, a box of lurid and garish dressing up clothes (the best sort really!), kiddie sized tables and chairs with plenty of paper and colouring pencils (though unfortunately most of them needed sharpening), a large box of lego and a plentiful supply of books from the central library around the theme of colour. Both my kids loved this space in the gallery but unfortunately the selection of art that made up the exhibition was not nearly as engaging, neither for me nor the kids.

Many of the pieces chosen were large canvases, which I think did work well for my 4 year old, as they made a big impact in the space they were hung in. Pictures and artifacts were placed together based on the main colour used in them, but apart from those grouped around red, and multicoloured, I felt that the colours chosen rather let the exhibition down – the yellows and greens were particularly dingy and certainly not the vibrant, zingy colours I had anticipated and which I think would have worked better for capturing the imagination of my young children.

Nevertheless our trip to the exhibition gave us a great excuse to unearth some fabulous books about colour, and later that day to make the most outrageous cake I have ever seen in my life….

We’ve had Lois Ehlert’s Planting a Rainbow at home for a while as I love to garden and had originally bought this book to help get the kids involved in choosing plants for the garden and then planting them out. Ehlert’s story is narrated by a child who does exactly this with her mum (actually, “mom”), selecting bulbs and seedlings to ensure a spectacular rainbow of colour in their garden. The simple text allows the show-stopping illustrations to sing on each page; Ehlert’s style is somewhat akin to that of Eric Carle, with the use of bold, cut-out shapes and strong colours, and these images are loved by both my 4 and 1 year old.

Once the garden has been planted and the flowers have started to bloom a single page is dedicated to each of the colours of the rainbow; “We have some red flowers…” (illustrated by tulips, carnations and a rose, “and orange flowers…” (illustrated by zinnias and tiger lilies), “and some yellow blooms” (paired with marigolds and daffodils) and so on through green, blue and purple ending up with a glorious bouquet from the entire garden, and the happy knowledge that next year the cycle will begin again.

The second book we chose for our colour-day-out was Here comes Frankie by Tim Hopgood. Frankie’s family life has always been quiet and peaceful but one day Frankie decides he wants to learn the trumpet. Despite the best attempts of his parents to keep the calm status quo, Frankie persists and after some initial teething trouble learns to play the trumpet so beautifully his parents are won over. In fact, Frankie’s trumpet playing is rather magical -  not only does it sound wonderful, but it also fills his house and his street with colours and smells (there is a brief note at the back of the book on the phenomenon of synaesthesia), and thereby transforms his neighbourhood from one where “even the birds had lost their chirp” to one where Frankie, his parents and neighbours end up dancing “to the sound of sunshine”.

Colour floods through this book. Although the start of the story is accompanied by neutral tones (while peace still reigns), each blast on the trumpet introduces more colours and patterns,  until they are quite literally bursting out and shining all over the later pages when a glossy sheen is overlaid on the illustrations. The endpapers display the colour palettes used in the book, akin to the colour swatches for paint in a diy store, and include the humourous names given to the different shades eg “Sssh! White” (a very pale bluey white), “Pin Drop Pink” (a pastelly pink) for the quiet colours, whilst many of the names of the loud colours are inspired by jazz musicians eg “Dizzy Yellow” and “Courtney Lime”.

The endpieces of Here come Frankie reminded my daughter of a costume I made for her over a year ago – her nursery was having an Ugly Bug Ball and she wanted to go as a snail (at the time I was only grateful she had not wanted to be a slug!). The day she announced this to me we happened to visit the haberdashery department of a local store, where they were throwing out the colour swatches for their sewing thread display so we grabbed them and turned them into decoration on her snail shell (something similar could of course be done with paint swatches):

But returning to Here comes Frankie, the story is delightful and one with elements many parents and children will recognise, not least the parents wishing for some peace and quiet whilst the kids want to make a racket. The illustrations match the story perfectly and leave readers young and old feeling buoyed up and full of energy.

With grandparents arriving the day after we’d been to the exhibition, when we returned home we fulfilled a fantasy of mine – we made a rainbow cake like the one I saw for the first time a few months back.  M and I both loved how outrageous this was – so much cake, so much icing and then to top it all we added a whole container load of edible glitter…. this was definitely a lot of fun to make!

With each slice being nearly 20cm tall this was quite a cake to eat (we struggled valiantly!). When we sliced it open we could certainly imagine Frankie’s trumpet making a jubilant, jazzy peel!

Finally to summarize:

Planting a rainbow:

Here comes Frankie:

…………………
Whilst digesting our slabs of cake we’ve been listening to…

Colour the Blues Away by Jennifer Gasoi

and another time we return to these books I’d like actually plant a real rainbow with bulbs. Now’s a good time to be planning this (here in the northern hemisphere) as it’s only a couple of months until the bulbs will need to be planted.