THE COLOR MONSTER

A child helps a mixed-up monster sort out its feelings in this inventive pop-up import from Spain.

Compartmentalization is the child’s strategy, as she urges the googly-eyed monster to pour its feelings into individual glass jars. Each emotion is linked to a color: happiness is yellow; sadness, “gentle and blue like a rainy day”; anger, a violent splash of red; calm “is as light as a green leaf / floating in the wind.” One spread-filling pop-up is devoted to each emotion/color, from clouds with lines of string “rain” to a hammock strung between leafy trees; all the now-full jars regather toward the end with pull-tabs to reveal their contents. There’s one feeling that is not accounted for, though. “What could it be?” puzzles the girl…but opening the final spread reveals the smiling monster radiating scribbly pink hearts, and viewers will have no trouble figuring it out. In the simple, childlike illustrations, which are made from pieces of cut—and often previously used—paper and scribbled crayons, even the flat figures look 3-D.

Bright and buoyant.