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Five Favourite Colourful Books

This week we've been considering our favourite books about COLOUR prompted by our #top5friday twitter chat with The Happy Book Club and Acorn Books, boy do we have some amazing titles to share with you!
Our top choice has to be The Colour Monster: A pop-up book written and illustrated by Anna Llenas and first published in the UK by Templar in 2015. This visual gem gently explores emotions through the use of colour. This simple concept means it is a great tool to help young children start to understand and talk about their own feelings as well as those of others. It has certainly prompted some interesting discussions with the Mini Reviewers


Just some of the amazing pop-ups!
At the start of the story the colour monster is described as all mixed up and very confused. He's yellow, blue, red, black and green all jumbled together - he's a mess. With the help of his friend he puts each of his feelings in a jar so he can take a closer look. Each double page spread that follows represents a feeling - happiness is a cheerful yellow; sadness a rainy blue; anger a fiery red;  fear a shadowy black; and calm a leafy green. The illustrations are glorious and the spectacular pop-ups have been very cleverly engineered making this book a lot of fun. It is a great book to read together and is currently a favourite in this house.


Our second choice is Mix It Up! by Herve Tullet. We love Herve Tullet's wonderful books and this one is no exception. Follow the simple instructions and watch as the splashes of colour magically transform. This is an incredibly engaging book to learn about colour mixing.


Our third choice is The Day The Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt and Oliver Jeffers is a riot of a book and will give everyone the giggle. It is probably best suited to 3+ although younger children can still appreciate the pictures. The story is about a little boy called Duncan who just wants to do some colouring but when he opens up his crayon box, he gets a surprise. His disgruntled crayons have quit but they've left some hilarious letters explaining their reasons. Will Duncan be able to solve the crayon crisis? We reviewed the sequel to this book, a long with some other very funny books here.


Our fourth choice is the timeless classic Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr and Eric Carle. This is a brilliant way to introduce colours (and animals) to the youngest of children. Filled with repetition and bold, colourful pictures this is a must for every toddler bookshelf!


Our final colourful pick is Wow! Said the Owl by Tim Hopgood. This is probably one of the most read books in our collection and is a great book to introduce colours, rainbows and the concept of nocturnal animals to toddlers. It is hard to beat Tim Hopgood's illustrations!

Wow! Said the Owl features in our list of 100 favourite picture books on our Amazon Store (affiliate link), why not take a look at what else made the cut?

We hope you enjoyed our choices. 
Please do share your own recommendations for colourful books below. 
We love hearing from you!

Until next time... HAPPY READING!


Kate & the Mini Reviewers xx


*Disclaimer: We received a copy of The Colour Monster for review purposes. However, all opinions are, as always our own. Also please note this post contains affiliate links. You can find out more about what this means here.

11 comments:

  1. Such a great idea to curate a selection of books on this theme. Kids are definitely drawn to bright colours, I will need to check some of these out (especially the Crayons quitting...curious!). Great photos too.

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  2. Great recommendations! We have all of these books on our bookshelf! I also like using Winnie the Witch and Elmer to talk about colours with Key Stage One children.

    #ReadWithMe

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    1. Elmer very nearly made it into the top five. Izzie has just picked up Winnie The Witch from the library so we'll have to have a read together, I'll let you know how we get on!

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  3. I used WOW the owl said to teach my youngest her colours! Great selection, thanks for sharing with #readwithme

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  4. I LOVE wow said the owl. we got it free in a book pack from the children's center and it's fab :) #KCACOLS

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  5. These books look great, I've read 'The Day The Crayons Quit' but not the others. I especially like the idea behind 'The Colour Monster' of using colours to describe feelings, such a useful concept when teaching emotional literacy. Having come across 'Press Here' in a bookshop I'm very interested in 'Mix It Up' too! #ReadWithMe

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  6. The colour monster looks like such a fun book!
    Thanks so much for linking up at #KCACOLS. Hope you come back again next time

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  7. Great selection and I'm with you on the top choice! Love our top 5 Friday's :) #readwithme

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  8. Some lovely books here. I really love the look of The Colour Monster! #KCACOLS

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  9. These all sound great. I especially like the sound of your number one, The colour Monster. May have to check it out at the library.

    Thanks for linking up.
    #KCACOLS

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  10. Such a useful post! My eldest loves books and I love to find new ones that will stimulate his imagination and encourage his emotional development #kcacols

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