The Black Book of Colors

This inventive picture book relates the ways the unseen Thomas experiences colors...Black raised line art is set against black pages that echo Thomas' spirited imagery and invite readers to explore what it's like to read with their fingertips. The descriptive, sensory text, which also incorporates white type and Braille, combined with an innovative design, makes this book the perfect starting point for discussions on difference, perspective, and experiencing and describing the world in new ways, topics that are relevant to readers of all ages.

What is most remarkable abuot this book's captivating concept...Is its execution.

The Black Book of Colors provides an excellent opportunity for children and adults to explore experiences and perspectives that are different from their own. Through the content and format of this book, readers will begin to understand the experience of a person who can only see through his or her other senses...The content stimulates the imagination...This book also has the value of teaching all readers to appreciate difference and, indirectly, the importance of inclusion. The Black Book of Colors is fully accessible to children who are blind, and it will validate their own experiences and acknowledge them as experts in reading by touch...a very appropriate 'educational resource' in the classroom...[and] a unique and innovative reading experience. Highly Recommended.

Fascinating, beautifully designed, and possessing broad child appeal, this book belongs on the shelves of every school or public library committed to promoting disability awareness and accessibility. A feast for the fingers.

...this non-picture book by a pair of Venezuelan artists reads triumphantly...While the concept is arresting in itself, Thomas' proclamations about color reveal him as a bold, engaging character...It would be a mistake to read the book as a message about how the other senses compensate for blindness: 'compensate' doesn't do justice to all that Thomas offers about what he tastes and feels and hears and smells.

...simple, sensuous text...The objects described with embossed lines that force readers to encounter them tactilely rather than visually. The shock readers feel will give way to wonder as they lose themselves in sightlessness and imagine the richness...Fascinating, challenging and lovely.

...unique....

...this is an elegant and artistic project, and it's sure to elicit some contemplation and discussion from young audiences...[The Black Book of Colours] offer[s] new realms to explore for visually impaired kids left out of the fun of most picture-book pages.

The Black Book of Colors [is] an intellectually challenging, graphically remarkable picture book.

...[a] most intriguing, very black book...