I received this book for free from the library in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Source: the library
My Many Colored Days
by
Dr. Seuss
concept book, picture book in Hardcover edition that was published by Knopf Books for Young Readers on August 20, 1996 and has 32 pages.
Explore it on Goodreads or Amazon
Illustrator: Lou Fancher, Steve Johnson
Other books by this author which I have reviewed include Sneetches and Other Stories, Horton Hatches the Egg & Horton Hears a Who!, Green Eggs and Ham, The Bippolo Seed and Other Lost Stories, The Lorax, Hooray for Diffendoofer Day!, Daisy-Head Mayzie, Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose, The King's Stilts, Scrambled Eggs Super!, Bartholomew and the Oobleck, Horton and the Kwuggerbug and More Lost Stories, You're Only Old Once!, McElligot's Pool, If I Ran the Circus, Sleep Book, I Can Lick 30 Tigers Today! and Other Stories, I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew, Oh, the Places You’ll Go!
A standalone story about the colors that reflect one’s feelings that will appeal to children and adults. And one to which I wish I could give a “7”!
My Take
Wow, the colors start immediately you open the book with the distressed bright green, the calmer orange, and the quieter purple which offsets the white background for the title page. It’s a rich palette of color and texture as the artists provide a sumptuous background for their figures with successive pages becoming more complex in the use of color.
The blurb says it’s about emotions and colors that we experience, and the next page confirms this with the primitive “snow angel”-like figures in red, blue, and green.
I did enjoy the multi-colored pages as the artists acknowledge how people’s moods change throughout one day. They continue on to pair up the emotion with an animal.
It’s a sophisticated palette with evolved, more adult-like rhymes that will appeal to adults as well as children. And provide good jumping-off points to discuss feelings with the kids.
If you’re struggling with your child, this book may be quite useful for him or her to explain his or her moods without feeling bad about them. It may even help to play with your child to be that critter for the day…or a shorter time. Explore the feeling/animal at different times during the day. S/he may have an easier time explaining how they feel with this.
I must confess to wanting my very own long, lon-n-g purple tail for my purple days! I could wear it and walk around my neighbors and make them laugh. And it would make me laugh as well.
The Story
It’s a case of the days and the color of your mood.
The Cover and Title
The cover has a black background, all the better to focus our attention on the bright colors. There’s a big red circle with the black title and the white for the author’s name. There’s a biggish yellow and orange square with a primitive round face and gradually descending squares in blues, greens and purples fluttering around the circle. Each square is sunk into the cover with a shadow around two sides.
The title is the truth, My Many Colored Days that describe my emotions.
