You Are Light: 04/13/19

You Are Light by Aaron Becker is a board book that teaches colors to children both through the text and through the book's design.

The text itself is a poem that compares the reader, "you" to different aspects of nature. Each of these traits is tied to a particular color. The traits and colors go through the visible spectrum, and black, and then ends on a white page proclaiming that the "you are light."

But what makes this book extra special is the center piece. From the cover art you can see the circles that make a color wheel. Each of these circles is made up one ore more layers of lightly tinted film. As pages are turned, more and more of these layers are built up to create the color wheel from the primary colors.

But!!! It gets better. Children are usually taught that the primary colors are red, blue, and yellow. But that's only the case with thicker pigments. For inks and transparencies, like this book, it's actually magenta, cyan, and yellow. This is the first book in about forty years I've seen written for children that uses the magenta, cyan, and yellow to show color mixing. The previous one was one that had this color mixing aspect was a book of optical illusions.

Five stars

Comments (2)

Comment #1: Sunday, May 05, 2019 at 06:57:05

Deb Nance at Readerbuzz

Thank you so much for this review!

Comment #2: Monday, May 06, 2019 at 21:52:00

Pussreboots

You're welcome. It's a beautiful book.