Los Colores (Colors) (My Very First Look At) (Spanish Edition) - Softcover

Reviewed with other titles in the My Very First Look series.

Ages 1-5. Bold and pleasing in design, books in the My Very First Look series offer very young children a chance to name familiar objects and older ones an opportunity to learn basic concepts or words that identify the items pictured. On each page, colorful photographs of objects appear, clearly defined against a white background. Colors, with about a dozen different things on each spread, features all the usual suspects, as well as pink, brown, white, black, silver, and gold. Most objects, such as grapes and boots, are readily identifiable, while others, such as shrimp (looking rather orange on the "pink" page) and crystal, will stump most preschoolers. The design of Numbers helps make counting easier through the clarity of its photos and the grouping of objects. There's a bit of crossover among the concepts in the books, but off-topic questions (such as in Colors, "How many apricots can you see?" and "Can you count the round things?") extend the text. The books on sizes and shapes carry out the visually dynamic format. Carolyn Phelan
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PreSchool-Mediocre entries in the growing field of concept books. Each book features a series of objects displayed across a spread, with a question appearing at the bottom of each page. The backgrounds in Colors are white and provide a sharp contrast for the brightly colored items. In Shapes, pages are of assorted bold colors that on occasion merge with objects. For example, the yellow beads illustrating the ring shape are depicted against a vivid yellow background. Also, some of the questions are ambiguous or may confuse preschoolers. In Shapes, when asked, "How many balls can you see?" there is only one ball, but there are also pictures of an orange and a round paperweight. For the most part, the question on the bottom of the page corresponds to the objects found directly above it. Far better choices for this age group include Tana Hoban's Colors Everywhere (Greenwillow, 1995) and Circles, Triangles, and Squares (Macmillan, 1974) and Lois Ehlert's Color Farm (1990) and Color Zoo (1989, both HarperCollins).
Lisa Gangemi Krapp, Middle Country Public Library, Centereach, NY
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