Through the Looking Glass Children's Book Reviews
The Color Monster: A Pop-Up Book of Feelings
Novelty Book
For ages 5 to 7
Sterling Children's Books, 2015 ISBN: 978-1454917298
We are going to meet a little girl and her color monster friend. It turns out that today the color monster is feeling “all mixed up” inside and he doesn’t understand why. In short the poor monster is “a mess.” All his emotions, and therefore his colors, are “jumbled up” and he has no idea what to do about this situation.
Being a good friend, the little girl decides to help the color monster. She suggests that the monster separate each of his feelings, putting each one in its own jar so that they are not mixed up anymore. The friends begin with happiness, which is a brilliant yellow. When you are happy you “laugh, jump, dance and play,” and you want to share the warm glowy feeling that you are experiencing with others.
Next comes sadness, which is blue. Sadness is the emotion that makes you want to cry or be my yourself. The monster and the little girl feel that sadness is “gentle and blue like a rainy day.”
By contrast, red is not a quiet, soft, feeling. Red is hot explosive anger, the emotion that makes you want to lash out at the world because something in your life is “not fair!”
Carefully the little girl sorts out the monster’s mixed up colors and emotions until they have five jars full of colorful feelings. Now the monster is no longer a lot of colors all mixed together. Now he is only one color. Now what can this remaining color mean?
In this delightful novelty title great characters, a sweet story, pop-ups, wonderful illustrations, and a page full of pull-the-tabs come together to give children a tool that will help them understand their own emotions. Children will laugh as they see how the monster reacts as his different emotions, and their associated colors, are gently teased apart until the monster is left with only one color. Children are going to have no problem figuring out what the monster is experiencing at the end of the story, and they will understand why he felt all mixed up when we first met him.
