Babar's Book of Color

Rating:
Summary: King of elephants, knave of theory
Review: My two year old son loves the pictures in this book, especially the giant blue whale and the tan camels. But don't take it too seriously as an introduction to mixing color. Babar may be king of the elephants but as a color theorist, he's a lightweight. Babar tells us that mixing the three primary colors makes black. Then, a few pages later, he tells us that to make brown you have to mix the three primary colors PLUS black. What? But I thought... Also strange--the "what will you paint with white?" illustration done in ice blue and every color BUT white. The problem isn't the contradictions but the fact that De Brunhoff sets himself up with the difficult task of bridging color theory, practice, and artistic convention in less than 30 pages. In a children's book! But kids will probably like the bright, clean illustrations. Also odd (in a non-color mixing way)--the page where Flora, Babar's elephant daughter, paints a herd of ten naked elephants.