Color Dance

by Ann Jonas

The girl in red, the girl in yellow, the girl in blue, and the boy in black and white are all set to stir up the rainbow. Watch them create a living kaleidoscope, step by step by step.

Genres: Picture Books, Childrens, Art, Storytime, Fiction, School

40 pages, Hardcover

First published October 23, 1989

Reviews

[Afaf Ammar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bright, colorful and joyful,
totally loved it 💜🎨
Be an artist, mix colors together and let them dance to discover how your favorite color is produced,

purple is red and blue mixed together,
my favorite color is :

💜 Purple~💜

09.07.2021

[Colleen · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is super inaccurate because the color it refers to as 'red' is actually pink; therefore, its entire premise is false.

[midnightfaerie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Our whole family loved this book. All about colors, the illustrations were simple and effective. It talked about the basic primary colors and then what colors you would get when you mixed them, working it's way up to more unusual colors like magenta. The kids in the book are doing a dance with this big colorful flags that when they run by each other, overlap and display a different color. It's their color dance. Lots of fun, we read it several times.

[Lauren Gustainis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book as a kid and recently got it for my niece as a Christmas present so I reread it. Don’t judge me for including in my book count for this year. It still rules honestly, more kids should know what chartreuse and vermillion and magenta look like

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Color Dance is a book on the primary colors and what colors they make combined, visualized through dancers with scarves. The author goes through the list of combinations–red with blue, red with yellow, yellow with blue–then goes on to show how white, gray, and black affect colors.

The biggest thing I like about this book is that the primary colors are portrayed accurately. Essentially, the colors in your printer cartridges (magenta, cyan, yellow) are the actual primary colors, as they can make every other color, but other colors can’t make them. I also like the visualization of color mixing as dance, and this could be incorporated into a class activity. Finally, I like the end page with the bonus information for those hungry for more.

I would use this when teaching color words (sight words). This could also be used in conjunction with the art teacher introducing the color wheel, and for an indoor recess activity, students could be given cards with red/blue/yellow and have to find their partner that makes a certain color.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Title: Color Dance
Author: Ann Jonas, Ann Jonas (Illustrator)
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers, 40 pp, 1989
Format: Picture Book (Concept Book)
Intended Audience: Children, ages 3 to 8
Description:
Color Dance is a picture book that combines both color and dance. Learn about the colors in the rainbow and what happens when you combine two different colors together.
Personal Review:
I found the illustrations in this picture book to be average and they didn’t really stand out. But with lack of creative and vivid illustrations, the picture book makes up for it with the great explanations about what colors you get when you combine them. There are 4 kid dancers that use different color fabrics and dance to show how they get another color from 2 different ones. This is a great concept picture book and helps kids learn about the colors in the rainbow. I know I certainly learned about 2 colors I never knew about, chartreuse and vermillion. This picture book is great for teaching children about color visually.
Color Dance was published almost 20 years ago but serves a fundamental purpose of teaching children about color through dance. The dancing combined with color fabric scarves creates a series of different hues and colors in the rainbow. The concept is simple and easy to understand. Children will definitely want to read this book to learn about color.
Citation of two critical sources:
Publishers Weekly’s review points out interesting mistakes in this concept picture book. Some of the illustrations can be confusing in that the combining of 2 different colors doesn’t show more than one color. Also, it points out that some of the colors, blue and red, are not traditionally considered to be the true color spectrum. I didn’t even notice these “mistakes” and they are so minimal that it doesn’t affect the fundamental purpose of the book, to teach kids about colors.
Children’s Literature’s review is a bit more upbeat and describes the book as a wonderful way to help kids learn about color. It also mentions how linking movement with color would also help stimulate creative thinking.

[Quanita · Rating 2 out of 5]

• Title: Color Dance
• Author: Ann Jonas
• Recommended Ages or grades: 2-6 year olds
• Summary: This is book for little girls who may like to dance. It starts with a group of three girls of different multicultural groups in dance clothes. The book has three girls who have big garments in red, yellow and blue and their leotard is the color of their scarves. A boy with a white scarf come later and at the end is a color wheel and a curtain of many colors. This book is a bit boring to me and there seems to be no direction.
• At least one “extra”
o What did you find particularly enjoyable/unenjoyable? I didn't enjoy this book, but I still think it can be used to introduce secondary colors.

[Joanne Roberts · Rating 4 out of 5]

This breathtakingly simple picture book explores color-mixing through an imaginary interpretive dance. Three children dance with silks of primary colors. As they overlap, the text talks about the color wheel and names the secondary and tertiary colors as well as touching on shades and tints. A brief explanation is written in the back. Color names like vermilion and aquamarine may be difficult for young readers to read alone, but excellent for reading aloud. The original watercolors are absolutely stunning! The vibrancy and subtlety are not caught in the Goodreads cover image.

[Jillian Cryder · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a very good book for teaching about colors! I wish I had this book while I was younger, I was always into coloring and painting and always was mixing different colors, Color Dance would have been a good study guide for me to use. Color Dance starts with the primary colors and talking about what they are by themselves then mixing them and talking about all the possible colors you can make with the colors combined or just two of them. Its quite interesting. I like that they used dancers to talk about something simple like mixing colors. Then at the end a dancer comes in with a gray/black sheet and talks about what that can do to colors. I actually really liked the book and the way that the pictures made it interesting! This would be a good book to provide to students while they are working on an art project, or before we do the project I could read them the book so they have an idea of what colors to mix to make other colors.

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ann Jonas does a good, clear job of pointing out different colors and what they make when you mix them together. She does this in her book "Color Dance" by the illustrations of little dancers running with sheer fabrics that are different colors the way these little dancers run creates a "color dance" that the class you're teaching could also do and participate in after or even during reading the book! The words are a little plain and not very fun but I guess it may be to keep the attention on the illustrations and the colors rather than the words. Also in this book it shows a color wheel with a lot of the colors on it and it gives you all the names of each color, so you can read through all of those colors together as a class as well.

[Alicia Evans · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this in preparation for my Colors storytime this week, but I decided not to use it. It really bothered me that the red character was actually pink, which is confusing for me let alone young readers trying to learn color and color theory. The premise was wonderful--I love using sheer scarves to show kids color blending too--but this was disappointing.

For: readers looking for a book about dance.

Red flags: The red is actually pink, thus the book is inaccurate.

[Alysa Fenner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow, this book was almost as old as me! I found a copy in the library that's cover had been marked all over with a pen, and I was able to take the ink out with a Clorox wipe. This book was a cute concept book that talks about mixing colors together. It also shows what happens when white is mixed with colors and when gray is mixed with colors. It is a good book for someone who is learning about colors and likes to dance.

[Maggie Ignasiak · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great book to accompany a number of lessons and activities. It's also great for many age groups, mostly thanks to the supplemental material at the end explaining primary, complementary, and tertiary colors. This would make a great book for learning colors, art classes, parachute activities, and dance classes.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun way to introduce small children to the concept of primary and secondary colors. I got introduce new vocabulary, like “chartreuse,” then explain that “chartreuse” is green with a lot of yellow mixed in. In doing that I modeled for parents how they can talk about picture books and new words with their children.

[Maeghan Nutmeg Librarian · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is irredeemable for telling me that pink is red. The color used for red in the edition I read today are P-I-N-K. The absolute LIES we are telling to our kiddos!

Honestly, I was (pleasantly) surprised to see that there was a boy shown in this dance class. Otherwise, definitely not a book I enjoyed at all.

[Allyson (Belle) · Rating 2 out of 5]

The conceptual idea was great, and this could still potentially be used as a story time aid for the mixing of colors, but ultimately not the best books for color learning as the red color is more pink.

[Ashlyn Vaught · Rating 3 out of 5]

The color dance is a book about 3 girls who dance with ribbons and are going through the color wheel and how the colors mix together. This book would be so fun to have in the classroom and do a movement activity along with the book.

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Decent book about colors and color mixing using kids in leotards dancing with scarves. Don't love that the 'red' is really pink - Stella already has a tricky time with red/pink, but that's kind of how colors are. I like mix it up better for books about color mixing.

[Amber · Rating 3 out of 5]

The red in this book is not red... it’s pink.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice depiction of the color wheel.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cute story about color but why does a boy represent white and black but the girls only represent one color each?

[Alyssa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this as a kid and I still do.

[Janet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great way to show how mixing the primary colors makes other colors and from the title one may think this is about dance. Good representation of mixing colors.

[Lynn Davidson · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a simply told, yet very helpful teaching about colours and missing them. Children with ribbons of colour demonstrate the combining of them to create new colours.

[Karla · Rating 5 out of 5]

great book at read to preschoolers

I added it to the art area

addresses shades and variances

rich vocabulary too

wonderful

[Stacey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Cute, but I think it might work better as a Big Book than this. (at least for storytime purposes)

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

How color mixing works; including using white, grey and black.

[Ethan & Isaac · Rating 5 out of 5]

I want to dance with scarves like that!

[Ron Turner · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked the idea behind it but they weren't able to quite pull it off, even with some of the colors (that's pink not red).

[Erin · Rating 2 out of 5]

A dancers mix colors with their sheets to show how primary and complimentary colors work. Cute visual. No story line.