A Story About Emotions

July 1, 2018

PreS-Gr 3-In this Spanish import, children can learn to compartmentalize feelings through colors. Multihued Color Monster "woke up feeling confused, and he doesn't know why." His friend, a young girl, helps detangle his jumbled-up feelings by having him separate each one into its own color jar. She explains, how happiness "shines yellow like the sun," where sadness "is lonely and blue like a rainy day." She extrapolates on each explored feeling with examples such as "When you are calm, you breathe deeply. You feel at peace." With a background in art therapy, Llenas finds an approachable way for kids to identify feelings, and allows for the understanding that one can have many emotions at once. Color Monster never goes into why he is feeling a certain emotion, allowing space for readers to attach personal meaning to their own emotions and feelings. It also shows kids it is okay to cry when you feel sad, and how sometimes naming a feeling and separating it from another feeling is enough. Llenas's use of watercolor, pastels, and collage on a variety of styles of papers and cardboard has a three-dimensional aspect, enveloping readers into each world of feeling. The book's open ending shows Color Monster experiencing a new feeling, allowing for extrapolation and further conversations. VERDICT A great guide and conversation starter for one-on-one, storytime, or early elementary and SEL classrooms.-Danielle Jones, Multnomah County Library, OR

Copyright 2018 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 15, 2018
A kid helps a monster sort out his emotions.A monster arrives, multicolored, with frowning mouth and troubled eyes. "Are you all mixed up again, Color Monster?" asks an inexplicably annoyed-looking child. Then, either the child or a narrative voice proclaims, "Your emotions don't work well when they're all jumbled up." The child, now smiling, offers to help separate the monster's emotions "and put each one in its own jar." Each emotion is assigned one color, and the monster turns that color only (rather than multicolored) while that feeling is explained. Placing emotions literally into jars implies an odd repressiveness, while declarations such as "When you're sad, you...want to be alone" are unnecessarily universalizing. The textual descriptions sometimes contradict the visual messages, showing aesthetically cheerful or peaceful artwork for spreads about sadness or confusion. However, taken on their own, the multimedia illustrations are downright splendid. Using wax colors, watercolor pencils, acrylics, pencil, and collage, Llenas lays out entrancing textures and hues in enthralling compositions with plenty of white space. Lines are scribble-style, checkered, and swirled; background paper is graphed, perforated, and newsprinted. Cardboard or cardstock cutouts, punctured and layered, look as though they could be felt by readers' fingertips. Shapes are irregular and organic like home-cut crafts. Tugged across a blank white spread by the eager child, the multicolored monster trails collaged ribbons of color.Ignore the lackluster, prescriptive text--get this Spanish import for its fabulous artwork. (Picture book. 3-6)

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