GUESS HOW MUCH I LOVE YOU: COLORS

An exploration of color from McBratney and Jeram’s nutbrown hares of Guess How Much I Love You fame.

On the left of each double-page spread, Little Nutbrown Hare encounters an animal or a plant in the featured color, such as a yellow flower, a green frog and a red ladybug. The hare greets these creatures and labels their colors with simple salutations, “Hello, yellow. // Good morning, green. // Hi there, red.” The facing pages caption, in a bold, black type, each of the colors on a slightly mottled and muted background of the shade in question. The last spread bears the text “Hello, Nutbrown!” and shows Big Nutbrown Hare hugging the little one amid the animals and plants from the previous pages. While Jeram’s watercolors are as fluid and playful as her work for the other franchise titles, two things get in the way of a solid presentation: the book’s trim size and its muted hues. The art is too dainty for the size of the pages, which are 5 inches square. The ladybug, in particular, is difficult to make out. Also, the colors are quite pale, which may confuse young learners. The objects on the “red” page look mostly pink, and some of the leaves on the “brown” page look to be a pale orange or yellow.

While this is the first title in the series aimed directly at babies and young toddlers, the small size of the art and the washed-out color values make it an imperfect concept book.