All the Colors of the Earth

From Publishers Weekly With her lyrical text and splendid oil paintings, Hamanaka ( The Journey ; Screen of Frogs ) offers a hymn to children everywhere, who are "all the colors of the earth and sky and sea." Extraordinary, light-filled paintings accompany the single curving line of text on each page. A girl whose complexion is described as the "crackling russets of fallen leaves" turns a cartwheel in a sparkling autumnal scene. An Asian boy stares into the eyes of a lion, and both subjects are the color of the "whispering golds of late summer grasses." Two bronze-haired boys play at the seashore, their skin the color of "the tinkling pinks of tiny seashells by the rumbling sea." Hamanaka salutes the varieties of "hair that flows like water" and "hair like bouncy baby lambs." She shows adults showering children with love that "comes in cinnamon, walnut, and wheat," and "amber and ivory and ginger and sweet." These joyful illustrations amply celebrate the richness and diversity of the world's ethnic heritages. All ages. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From School Library Journal Grade 1-4-A poetic picture book and an exemplary work of art. The simple text describes children's skin tones and hair in terms of natural phenomena ("...the roaring browns of bears"; "...hair that curls like sleeping cats in snoozy cat colors") and then describes love for these children with rich colors and flavors ("...love comes in cinnamon, walnut, and wheat..."). Hamanaka's oil paintings are all double-page spreads filled with the colors of earth, sky, and water, and the texture of the artist's canvas shines through. The text is arranged in undulant waves across each painting. This might be paired with Arnold Adoff's Black Is Brown Is Tan (HarperCollins, 1973), for younger readers, or his All the Colors of the Race (Lothrop, 1982), for older students, or read alone in celebration of diversity.