Shade and Hue: Blue by Laura Vaccaro Seeger

There are many a shade and hue of BLUE.

Baby blue.

The soft hue of a baby blue blanket where a puppy sleeps.

There is the blue of blueberries plunking into a bucket, the deep blue of a butterfly in high summer, and the many blues of a sea wave as it breaks on the shore.

In the boy's bed the boy and dog sleep through the deep blue of midnight. They slosh through the icy blue of a snowy twilight, fly a bright blue kite high against a soft blue sky, and run from the deep, angry blue of a summer storm cloud..

Old Blue as the dog, now aged, on his worn blue blanket, the True Blue of the boy as he cradles his old and sick dog, and the lonely blue, as his misses his dog, now gone.

And one bright day, there's a new dog to walk with him along the ocean's edge....

Laura Vaccaro Seeger's latest Caldecott Honor book, Blue (Roaring Brook, 2018), explores the range of feelings associated with the color blue, done beautifully in textured acrylic paintings, with die cuts on verso pages to lead the eye and mind to the following page, tracing the course of time itself--of the boy, growing up, and his dog, growing old, in the bit of time they share. A companion book to Seeger's Caldecott book, Green, this newest shows why the artist is a five-time award-winner. Her ability to meld image and color and word into meaning makes her one of the stars of the art of the picture book. "Though there is sorrow, it is followed by joy in this touching tribute to a heartwarming relationship that will engage readers of all ages," says School Library Journal's starred review.