Winnie the Pooh Muted in Winnie-the-Pooh's Colors?
Written: Nov 10 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Learn colors with a familiar guy. Gain some new colors on your preschooler's wheel.
Cons: Muted colors confuse some children.
The Bottom Line: Illustrations are beautiful and colors are muted and shades not used in most preschool books. When your child is ready for graduate color lessons, read this book with them.
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| nwinston's Full Review: Winnie the Poohs Colors Books |
~=~ Know your Colors? ~=~
When you become a parent, there are tons of things you can worry about. After all, your child doesn't come with a helpful manual. Which they should. But that's another epinion. At any rate, the one thing you're fairly sure you won't have to worry about is Preschool homework. After all, you can fingerpaint, right? Cut with blunt scissors? Outline your hand to make a turkey? You know the ABC song, don't you? And unless you're colorblind, you know your colors.
Or do you? What about puce? Ocean always confuses me. Is that a morning ocean on a sunny day? A Carribean ocean? Or an ocean on a stormy night? Tomato may seem obvious but I've seen a lot of shades of tomatoes, from green to yellow, orange to bright red. Perhaps you'd better study up on your colors after figuring out diapering!
~=~ Preschool Color Lessons ~=~
Most children's books have bright colors. Many are chock full of primaries and other vivid hues. In particular, books which are written to teach children their colors picture totally non-ambiguous shades of color. Blue is royal, brown is rich and purple is definitely not lavender.
At least most color books are like that. Winnie the Pooh has a different lesson for preschoolers. Inspired by A. A. Milne, decorated by Ernest H. Shepard, Winnie-the-Pooh's Colors is a bit off the beaten path.
~=~ Natural nostalgia ~=~
In this charming book, we get the original Winnie and friends. The illustrations in this book have Winnie, Piglet, Christopher, Eeyore, Tigger, Rabbit and Owl looking more like the 1920's versions of themselves. Less like cartoons, more like real animals, these are the nostalgic Pooh renderings.
Pooh books have always resisted color trends. Drawn with muted, shaded, lower hues, these books are more natural looking than some illustrations made for children. Because of this, you may wonder about Winnie's fitness for teaching colors to children.
~=~ Winnie's Version ~=~
Winnie the Pooh's Colors is organized with each 2 pages which face each other devoted to a single color. Outlining the pages in the color presented, the pictures and text show an object of that color.
Is Pooh's sweater red? My son thought it was orange. It's actually more than one shade of red. Somewhat orangy red. And what about Christopher Robin's door and Piglet's sweater? Dark olive and light woodland are shades of green that my son knew. And Pooh's blue balloon was obvious. But how about the page opposite, proclaiming the sky as blue? My son protested, "It's white!" Sure enough, except for the bees and a few streaks of extremely subtle faint blue, the sky is white. We looked outside and discussed how many shades of color there are in the sky. And what about the bees, said to be black and yellow. My son pointed out that the large white wings cover most of the yellow. The Tigger picture says he's orange. I was pleased that my son pointed out the omission of the black stripes in the text.
The largest color ambiguity came from Eeyore's stick hut and Pooh's honey. These pictures look like they used the exact same shade of paint. Yet the sticks are said to be brown, the honey gold. We talked about how certain shades of gold and brown are really the same color. And is it just us or does Christopher Robin's bathtub look more like the old, un-PC Crayola color of "flesh" than pink? To finish out the book, we decided that Christopher Robin's books are actually more of a dark or steel gray than black.
~=~ Is Ambiguity a Good Thing ~=~
There are transitions in child development. At one point, children can't really grasp ambiguities. As the saying goes, everything is black & white. How appropriate for discussing a color book! But at some point, children do begin to distinguish shades of gray. Did your child ever call all animals "dogs"? Or all furniture "chairs"? Children often group large categories together under one word. Then they start sorting out the categories. When your child is ready to sort out the color categories, Winnie the Pooh's Colors is a good book to read.
~=~ Bottom Line ~=~
Winnie the Pooh's Colors has beautiful illustrations. The color lessons given are more subtle than other preschool books. After your child learns the color basics from Barney or White Rabbit, give them a little more ambiguity. Read from a book that's not only more subtle but more attractive. Borrowing from Jessica Rabbit, "Pooh's just drawn that way."
~=~ Details~=~
Reading level: Ages 4-8
Hardcover - (September 1995)
Unknown; ISBN: 0525454284 ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.37 x 10.31 x 6.35
~=~ Write Off ~=~
This review is part of the Epinions from Pooh Corner Write-Off hosted by MaryTara. Winnie the Pooh recently celebrated his 75th birthday (on 10/14) and this write-off is in his honor.
Please check out the other Epinions from Pooh Corner Write-Off participants:
ali78 ariel10575 astidham bearysweet bonniesayers bradybunch CarolaLind CyndiCM deaser26 debbie26 debtipton dgturtle2 donnie013 imames karmiausnic kurt_g kurt_messick lisa_j MaryTara melissasrn mellkinwa Mtbat neenkena nwinston ritag11 sblaydes social14 staceys1 threeofakind tritter72 vbfc vemartin
To use an easy viewing interface, hosted by Shurie visit: http://www.isparkl.com/epinions/write_off_easy_reader.asp?id=2
Recommended:
Yes
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nwinston
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Location: US
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Loving my boys and the summer weather in Oregon!
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