RED CANOE SHOWS UP AT TWO!

Eye-catching images help kids master time and colors as a range of watercraft parade by.

“I spent the day / On the dock, / And who chugged up at one o’clock? / An orange tugboat.” Variations on this catchy refrain accompany brilliantly chromatic stock photos of nine different boats that successively hove into view. The time of day is displayed on both digital and analogue clocks; the color changes for each boat, as does the action verb (bobbed, rowed, and zoomed, to name a few). Five of the boats are helmed by grown-ups, all of whom present male. Kids in life vests are depicted, either with the adults or on their own; most appear white. The colors are generally presented in the order of the visible light spectrum—though the orange tugboat precedes the red canoe, and indigo and violet have merged into purple, followed by the brown houseboat, the white sailboat, and the gray kayak. The last caption announces “a rainbow boat party”—but not all the colors appear here, and a new one (pink) is introduced. A final page of fine concept-enforcing suggestions includes putting random finds in “rainbow order,” thinking up different boat types and colors for 11 and 12 o’clock, and brainstorming activities that can be done in a second, a minute, and an hour.

Useful and attractive introductions to several important concepts.