The Color Monster

From School Library Journal PreS-K—Employing a rainbow of tones, a young girl tries to help her multihued friend understand why he is "feeling all mixed up." The unnamed child distinguishes five emotions (happiness, anger, sadness, fear, and calm) and articulates what each one might feel like by equating it with a color. A smiling golden monster on a spread featuring yellow leaves and cutouts represents happiness, describing it as "yellow like the sun." The text explains, "When you're happy you laugh, jump, dance and play. You want to share that feeling with everyone." Conversely, when blue, "you're sad you might want to cry or be alone." Most dramatically, a red monster jumps off the page and declares, "When you're angry, you want to stomp and roar and shout, 'It's not fair!'" Emotions are described in age-appropriate terms, and although calm is a bit tricky ("you breathe slowing and deeply. You feel at peace."), there's no question what the fellow bathed in green is feeling as he rests in a hammock, eyes closed with a smile on his face. A final emotion is left unnamed for readers or listeners to identify, but pink hearts give it away. A number of books, such as Molly Bang's When Sophie Gets Angry—Really, Really Angry (Scholastic, 2004), explore how a child deals with a particular emotion; Color Monster considers the range of feelings a child can experience. As with most pop-ups, durability is a question. VERDICT Less a story than a vehicle to initiate a reassuring conversation about emotions and how to identify them.—Daryl Grabarek, School Library Journal