Review by tjportugal -- What's Your Favorite Color?
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tjportugal
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Review by tjportugal -- What's Your Favorite Color?
[Following is a volunteer review of "What's Your Favorite Color?" by Amber L Lassiter.]
Amber goes to school wearing an article of clothing of her favorite color. She will have to use this color in today’s exciting activity: painting a picture. However, having forgotten her paint cans, Amber has to borrow them from her classmates. She borrows cherry-red, banana-yellow and blue. She finishes her painting using only these three colors, but none of them is her favorite. She resorts to an artistic trick and the end result makes her classmates gaze at the picture in awe! What’s Amber’s favorite color after all?
What’s Your Favorite Color?, by homonymous Amber L. Lassiter, is a catchy story aimed at developing reading skills in young children. The storyline is strategically halted every other page with engaging questions that focus the reader’s attention into specific details, like listing names according to the order of the alphabet (adult guidance is obviously needed). The reader is provoked into savoring the plot to its minute details instead of just rushing through it. In this way, the children develop verbal skills while enjoying reading.
My favorite element was the attention to a detailed description of both oral and body language: facial expressions, gestures, attitudes, phrases. While developing reading skills, the children also learn to understand and express their emotions and feelings. Moreover, the story also touches some moral elements like generosity and companionship.
The linguistic quality is also very good. As expected there is no profanity, swearing or erotic element. The text flows at a kid’s pace, the sentences are well structured and the range of vocabulary diversity is very appropriate for the target audiences. I especially enjoyed the rhymes, the riddles and the “teetered and tottered” alliteration. These are the kind of stylistic devices that make the kids engage with and memorize stories that will stay with them for the rest of their lives.
The illustrations are excellent. The melody of the music score is also very beautiful, even if it might not have been on purpose. The only imprecision is the fact that only Amber is wearing the crocheted cotton beret (and only in three images), while the narrator states that “The students ran to their easels and put on their smocks and crocheted cotton berets”.
As for some of the less positive aspects, there are a few typos. They wouldn’t be problematic in adult literature but this is an element that I am quite intolerant to when it comes to children’s books, considering that kids are learning and absorbing knowledge almost acritically. In What’s Your Favorite Color?, the typos are aggravated by the circumstance of being in the context of an educational book. Also, the number of typos is somewhat high, given that plain text would only amount to about 10 pages. I would also suggest adding page numbering. In any case, the book still looks professionally edited.
What’s Your Favorite Color?, by Amber L. Lassiter is the kind of book teachers and parents look for while in the adventure of teaching and educating young minds. I rate this book a borderline 3 out of 4 stars (almost four out of four). The missing start has to do with the typos and imprecisions in the illustrations. Fixing them would result in an impeccable book for primary school children; it would clearly appeal most to them. Still, this is definitely a must-have; hats off to the author.
******
What's Your Favorite Color?
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
Amber goes to school wearing an article of clothing of her favorite color. She will have to use this color in today’s exciting activity: painting a picture. However, having forgotten her paint cans, Amber has to borrow them from her classmates. She borrows cherry-red, banana-yellow and blue. She finishes her painting using only these three colors, but none of them is her favorite. She resorts to an artistic trick and the end result makes her classmates gaze at the picture in awe! What’s Amber’s favorite color after all?
What’s Your Favorite Color?, by homonymous Amber L. Lassiter, is a catchy story aimed at developing reading skills in young children. The storyline is strategically halted every other page with engaging questions that focus the reader’s attention into specific details, like listing names according to the order of the alphabet (adult guidance is obviously needed). The reader is provoked into savoring the plot to its minute details instead of just rushing through it. In this way, the children develop verbal skills while enjoying reading.
My favorite element was the attention to a detailed description of both oral and body language: facial expressions, gestures, attitudes, phrases. While developing reading skills, the children also learn to understand and express their emotions and feelings. Moreover, the story also touches some moral elements like generosity and companionship.
The linguistic quality is also very good. As expected there is no profanity, swearing or erotic element. The text flows at a kid’s pace, the sentences are well structured and the range of vocabulary diversity is very appropriate for the target audiences. I especially enjoyed the rhymes, the riddles and the “teetered and tottered” alliteration. These are the kind of stylistic devices that make the kids engage with and memorize stories that will stay with them for the rest of their lives.
The illustrations are excellent. The melody of the music score is also very beautiful, even if it might not have been on purpose. The only imprecision is the fact that only Amber is wearing the crocheted cotton beret (and only in three images), while the narrator states that “The students ran to their easels and put on their smocks and crocheted cotton berets”.
As for some of the less positive aspects, there are a few typos. They wouldn’t be problematic in adult literature but this is an element that I am quite intolerant to when it comes to children’s books, considering that kids are learning and absorbing knowledge almost acritically. In What’s Your Favorite Color?, the typos are aggravated by the circumstance of being in the context of an educational book. Also, the number of typos is somewhat high, given that plain text would only amount to about 10 pages. I would also suggest adding page numbering. In any case, the book still looks professionally edited.
What’s Your Favorite Color?, by Amber L. Lassiter is the kind of book teachers and parents look for while in the adventure of teaching and educating young minds. I rate this book a borderline 3 out of 4 stars (almost four out of four). The missing start has to do with the typos and imprecisions in the illustrations. Fixing them would result in an impeccable book for primary school children; it would clearly appeal most to them. Still, this is definitely a must-have; hats off to the author.
******
What's Your Favorite Color?
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
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