WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE COLOR?

Carle’s latest collection of compositions by artistic friends—assembled to support his eponymous museum—celebrates the splendor of color.

The rainbow of stripes on the endpapers links this with Bill Martin Jr. and Carle’s blockbuster, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, although here the brushstrokes are vertical. Carle leads with yellow sunshine, partially, he notes, because the color presents a process-related challenge, while Uri Shulevitz honors all colors in his concluding collage of architectural facades: “Because a single color may feel lonely.” From William Low’s Bronx brownstones and Etienne Delessert’s surreal indigo nomad to Bryan Collier’s rainy-day-blue balloons and the late Anna Dewdney’s (now especially poignant) purple peacocks, 15 double-page spreads and a few accompanying sentences offer access to a diverse range of styles and personalities. A familiar-looking elephant adorns itself with green paint in Philip C. Stead’s scene, which he accompanies with a poem. The white background of Yuyi Morales’ crosshatched portrait of herself as a child presents a striking contrast to the “Mexican Pink” bougainvillea she holds. This title offers visual stimulation to the very young, a chance to explore a concept imaginatively with preschoolers, and, for older children, opportunities to converse about the styles and dispositions of illustrators they may recognize. There are no notes about the media, but this is a minor critique.

A book certain to engross and enthrall.