Of colors and things /

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

"Crisp photos of familiar items offer a unique puzzle/adventure in color, shape, and object identification. A kaleidoscopic book that reflects the textured, technicolor world of children." --School Library Journal.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

A bright blue comb, a pair of fire-engine red mittens, a vibrant yellow butterfly: the pages of the inimitable Hoban's ( 26 Letters and 99 Cents ; Shapes, Shapes, Shapes ) latest offering fairly burst with glossy, glorious color. The rainbow objects she presents here are at once familiar and fresh, all of them a treat for the eye. And her striking, sumptuous photographs prove once more that wordless books can captivate and entertain children. The layout of the book is simple and elegant: each page is quartered by a ribbon of color, and in three of the four quadrants are objects of corresponding hue--jellybeans, pinwheels and toy dinosaurs; in the fourth quarter is a bright object that combines many primary colors. These pages will undoubtedly provide a satisfying give-and-take between parent and child--this is a splashy offering. Ages 3-up. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

School Library Journal Review

PreS-K-- Instead of interposing itself between readers and the subject, the lens of Hoban's camera seems to strip away whatever might have kept them from really seeing the captured object. No red, yellow, green, orange, or blue ever looked so pure, so intense, so much itself. Like a gift box, each generous white page is tied with a ribbon of the featured color. The resulting rectangles frame user-friendly objects from a child's bright world: toys, food, and ``accessories'' in isolated glory. On each page one multicolor grouping invites a search for the matching color. Reassuringly, colors in nature here hold their own against paint and plastics. Of Colors and Things is a book that recreates objects for the adult as it interprets them for the child. --Patricia Dooley, University of Washington, Seattle (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Booklist Review

Ages 2-6. Illustrated with precise, full-color photographs, Hoban's latest picture book explores colors in a highly accessible way. On each page, two 3/4-inch ribbons of color cross at right angles in the center of a page, dividing it like a wrapped present. Three sections contain objects of the same color as the divider; the other displays items of several colors. For instance, bands of yellow divide one page into four rectangles. A yellow toy telephone appears in the first area; in the second are four buttons (red, yellow, blue, and purple); the third has a ripe banana; and in the fourth stands a yellow clock. This novel arrangement not only reinforces the learning of colors, it also offers a playful twist: the section with many colors diverts the child from "name that color" to a guessing game, before mere labeling has a chance to get dull. Once again Hoban hits on a simple device to heighten a child's awareness, but what lifts this above the average concept book is the quality of its design and illustration. --Carolyn Phelan

Kirkus Book Review

Photographs in each quadrant of a page--intersected by a cross in the photos' dominant color--will serve as springboard to discussion of color, shape, utility, similarity, and a multitude of other subjects. Hoban has selected objects as diverse as a pumpkin and a ribbon, a bath toy and an ear of corn, all intrinsically interesting to a preschooler; as grouped in her dazzling, clear, sharply focused photos, they fairly beg to be talked about. Best, there is more than one page per color and always one photo with more than one color on each page, inviting comparisons and leading nicely to the next page. . .and the next. Even the endpapers display an exciting parade of brightly colored objects to beckon the ""reader."" Though wordless, this beautifully designed, deceptively simple book demands verbal explanation: while the subjects are concrete, the familiar is blended with the unfamiliar in such a way as to stimulate both thought and conversation (""Yes, that's a brown dog. No, it's not real, it's ceramic""). Fine as a lap book or for sharing with a group; a treasure no library serving preschoolers should forgo. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Tana Hoban was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She has also lived in Holland and England. Hoban graduated from Moore College of Art in Philadelphia in 1938, and painted in Europe as a recipient of the John Frederick Lewis Fellowship. When she returned to Philadelphia, she worked as a free-lance advertising artist and magazine illustrator. By 1950 her work was included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and in 1953 she was the only woman mentioned in a Time magazine portfolio on "Half a Century of U.S. Photography." In 1959 she was named one of the Top Ten Women Photographers by the Professional Photographers of America.

Hoban worked as an instructor in photography at the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania from 1966 to 1968. In 1967 she produced and filmed Catsup, an award-winning film which was shown at the Venice Film Festival. By 1955, she had written a book on photographing children, and in 1970 she combined her skills as a photographer with her interest in children to produce her first juvenile picture book, Shapes and Things. In 1973, Hoban served as project photographer for Beginning Concepts, a series of sound filmstrips produced by Scholastic Magazines, Inc. From 1974 to 1976 she taught photography at New York University.

As of 1990, five of her books had been listed as ALA Notables. She has received awards for her entire body of work three separate times. In 1991, she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from her alma mater, the Moore College of Art. Her works are included in the Kerlan Collection at the University of Minnesota and the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, among other collections in both the United States and France.

(Bowker Author Biography)