Synopsis: 'Who are my parents - blue, red or yellow?' asks Purple Square. Your dad is red and your mum is blue - Of course, they're the only parents for you! Using the metaphor of parentage, secondary colours discover their primary colour sources, finishing with a medley of colours in this simple board book.

Review: This book about primary and secondary colours by Hervé Tullet has a lovely graphic appearance, reminiscent of the playful work of Joan Miró or the Russian Constructivists. Small children can look through and stick their fingers into holes that are square, then circular, then triangular. The book has a pleasing size and feel, with rounded outside edges and plenty of white clean white space. While the juxtoposition of colours clearly explains the concept of primary and secondary colours and looks visually striking, one wonders if the anthropomorphism of the colours blocks entirely succeeds for the book's intended young age group. Each colour block contains a single expressionless eye, which looks bold and graphic, but could also look a bit sinister, like the strange stones with eyes in 'Marianne Dreams' by Catherine Storr. The lovely swirling lines of colour – 'the carnival' – at the end of the book seem to fall slightly short of the mark, since the lines are so thin that it's difficult to pick out colour changes where the lines intersect each other. And the translated text from the French seems slightly clunky: 'Yellow is your dad and red is your mum – with so much love, you'll never be glum!' But the book has a clear, strong concept and made this reviewer wonder how the concept could be expressed again with alternative designs.

Redesigning the book could be a great classroom exercise for all ages, following the same principles of the colour wheel but creating new, personalised stories to walk through the same lesson. A wide range of materials could be used to show the mixing of primary colours, such as cut-out windows with coloured cellophane or watercolour washes. The carnival page could be kept abstract, or participants could interpret the carnival much more figuratively.

2008-04-06