Book Description
for Living Color by Steve Jenkins
From Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC)
Artist Steve Jenkins examines the dynamic palette of the natural world in a playful and informative volume. Jenkins organizes the book by color (red, blue, yellow, green, orange, purple, pink), using the various creatures he depicts in his boldy colored, cut-paper collages to exemplify that color in nature and also assign it attributes. “Yellow says . . . Boo!” (Madagascar moon moth, whose unfolded wings reveal a yellow face and eyes.) But it also says, “I’m complicated.” (Common cuttlefish, which changes color to suit its needs in a given moment.) The striking illustrations stand out against bright white pages, which feature a variety of creatures on each page spread. As in his other highly visual volumes about the natural world, Jenkins incorporates factual information into his narrative, and at the end of the volume, where there are additional facts about each creature along with a thumbnail reproduction of its full-color image. (Ages 6–10)
CCBC Choices 2008. © Cooperative Children's Book Center, Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 2008. Used with permission.