The Great Blueness and Other Predicaments

Color becomes metaphorical in this children's book. That is why I find it a work of genius. I primarily use it every year in K to 3rd education to open dialogs about color because I'm an artist turned teacher turned literature advocate and my vocabulary in a classroom is making. Someone, somewhere decided that in kinder and 1st grade "color" was a good subject at years start both in reading color words and in simple patterning and discrimination tasks- forgetting I think that children have related through it since birth, it is nonsensically simple to them tho it can be made very rich, so I look for ways to make this "concept" richer(like learning all the Crayola box color names and writing those or naming my reading groups "fuchia, chartreuse, pomegranate"). This is one of those stories to build depth. I just re read it awhile ago sitting at school thinking of how to use the story this coming year. On the surface a wizard color by color re tints the black and white world by inventing a paint that makes everything that shade. Too much of a good thing it affects mood and creates conflict(red) , sadness(blue) so on in people who initially are almost drunk with joy for the discovery and affect. So on the surface for the kind of child or teacher who are fairly on the surface thinkers, you can open up work teaching on emotional response to color from that.Lots to do there. Certainly as I connect into our art work the book serves a purpose in that way...so now we are talking about emotion and what evokes feelings.Color, feeling, mood...get out Coltrane for the blueness and Theilmans, maybe Miles Davis (tho he is yellow to me)and now you are moving the child into another kind of responding to color... Then it's interesting because the "people" for whom the wizard works in the story demand the color changes, get their fill, demand yet another color. Rather like humanity discovering, gorging, purging...at some point an accident resolves the story and I hope you'll forgive me for this...all color is spread around and harmony is found in the mix. So in a sense it's a good opening for dialogs about how we need differences in people,world, the whole is greater for it's variants.(a great story for an adult is the Oliver Sack's work on the colorblind-both the island story and one I think in Rembrandt's Hat-how color perception or the lack of it affects understanding). When my daughter Sylvia was young this book was one she really loved, I suspect because it's a very rich, wise story that talks about one thing while teaching another. How it is not reprinted I cannot fathom. By far it is one of the classic books on acceptance, color, discovery,tolerance, wonder I know. A thousand children can back my recommendation to add it to any collection for children.

One of the facts that most amazed me when I was young was that by mixing different relative combinations of the colors red, yellow and blue it is possible to make all colors. That is the underlying theme of this book, although the joy of a colorful environment is also included. The story begins in a village where everything is grey, including the moods of the people. However, a wizard mixes a potion that is blue, which fascinates the people of the town. In their festive mood, they paint everything blue and call it the great blueness. Once the novelty wears off, the general mood of the populace becomes blue as nothing has really changed for them. Being bright and industrious, the wizard goes back to his cellar and makes yellow. His demonstration of the new color is a cause for celebration and once more the townspeople are over-zealous and paint everything yellow. Once again, the novelty wears off and the people are bored with yellow. This causes the wizard to create red and the people are once again happy and paint everything red. As the collective boredom sets in once again, the people all start to argue and even took some of their anger out on the wizard. Finally, he goes back to his cellar and to his astonishment, he mixes the three colors and makes a complete rainbow of delightful tints. The townspeople have learned their lesson and use different colors so now the town is a kaleidoscope of colors. This is a delightful children's book that stresses differences and how they make the world interesting. If it is followed by some information about color schemes, then the children will learn how the primary colors make everything.

This, I think, is my favorite children's book. I remember it all the way back from when I was a child, and I found one at a library to read to my 2 year old. It's about a wizard who lives in a gray world, and he mixes up the color blue in his workshop. Everyone in the village wants some, and they paint eveything blue. The illustartion of this spreads across both pages and is dense with detail of the villagers painting each other and all the animals. The blue color makes everyone sad after a while and so the wizard creates yellow. That brings it's own problems, as does red, and in the end the wizard accidentally mixes the colors to make the rest of the color palette. The illustrations of the medieval villagers is delightful and the story itself is unusual and well-told.

The Great Blueness and Other Predicaments tells the story of a wizard who lived a long time ago, when there were no colors in the world. Everything in the world was black and white and gray. To amuse himself, the wizard mixes some things together and finds some interesting stuff in the bottom of his cauldron. When he names the stuff "blue" and paints his house with it, his neighbors want some. The rest of the story explains what happens after that.I am familiar with this book from an old copy that was given by a friend, and think it should be back in print. The text has an air of gentleness, even while describing the problems that the wizard has to deal with. There are clever rhymes, reflecting details in the illustrations. Preschool children will enjoy this book being read to them, and older children will appreciate the humor and lessons embedded in the story.