Compare and Contrast! Black and White by Debora Vogrig

WHITE WAKES UP...

... And as dawn lightens the sky, the brightening White slips insides the sleeping silhouetted buildings, seeking her friend Black, hiding, as he often is, under the bed. White pushes under the bed, and finds her friend.

"HEY! STOP PUSHING! YOU'RE SQUASHING ME! BLACK GRUMBLES."

White has got places to go and things to do in the morning, but Black decides to trail along, turning into a dark octopus, gleefully squirting dark ink onto the spotless white!

Next he organizes the black ink to make the black spots of a speedy Dalmation running into a forest of birchbark tree trunks. White and Black are on a roll now, and together they make a white polar bear with black nose and a flock of two-toned penguins at the opposite pole.

Moving fast, White and Black form a racing herd of Zebras and a black panther in the rain forest and they go down to the sea flying the black and white Jolly Roger flag of a pirate.

And then it is Black's turn to creep into the landscape, creating those elongated evening shadows. The spiral of darkness begins to take charge.

But the two friends still have just enough light for a game with black and white chess pieces, a sing-along with the black and white keys of the piano, one more story on the black-and-white of the printed page--and just enough light from the crescent moon and a million points of light in the black sky.

It takes TWO, in Debora Vogrig's latest, Black and White (Eerdmans Books for Young Readers, 2021).

Picture book gurus always advise choosing books for youngsters with vibrant colors, but, au contraire, this tour-de-force of picture book possibilities offers a bold sample of what can be done with black and white in the hands of an able author and an illustrious illustrator.

Working solely (but dually) with all-black and all-white pages, illustrator Pia Valentinis uses the contrasting markings of black-and-white animals to make each one easily recognizable in an eye-catching, brain-stimulating reverse-the field technique that illustrates the importance of differences, no matter how very diverse they can be.

Opposites attract, it seems, in this clever story of light and dark White and Black, working together to make their own world. "The story unfolds in short spare sentences that match the illustrations, both text and artwork presenting just enough for readers to fill in the details with their imaginations," says

Eye of the Beholder! A Day So Gray by Marie Lamba

"Summer's lease hath all too short a stay," said Shakespeare,and he had a point. As the bright riot of summer shades fade into fall's muted hues, winter brings an admittedly limited palette to the landscape.

As two girls suit up for a chilly outing, one of them is feeling blue. The view out the window indeed shows few hues!

"This day is so gray!"

"No, it isn't!" says her friend.

The first girl points out that the field is blah brown, and so are the woods. But her friend makes her take a second look at the subtle shades to be seen even in winter.

She cites the warm brown of some trees, the deep red of berries clinging to the brown bushes, the purplish shadows beneath them. Her doubting friend persists.

"Well, this snow is boring white.

That cat is black."

But her perceptive friend points out the many shades of the snow. She says that the cat has markings of white, glowing green eyes, and a pink nose, too.

And when they come inside and warm up in front of the roaring fireplace, the picky girl says she hates orange. But then, there's the sunset, with so many other warm colors all together.

It's a day that is much more than gray, in Marie Lamba's forthcoming salute to the ways of bleak days, A Day So Gray (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Clarion, 2019), who shows how to "always look on the bright side of life" in the variety of different seasons. After all, the girl who hates the few hues of winter is really taking an overzealously black-and-white position on seasonal colors. Artist Alea Marley's appealingly vibrant wintry scenes and her charming little girls who make their cases well can speak for most of us who can, if we try, find something to love in all the seasons.

Hot chocolate, anyone? It's there, too, in shade and hue!

Your True Colors: They Say Blue by Jillian Tamaki

THEY SAY BLUE IS THE COLOR OF THE SKY,
WHICH IS TRUE TODAY.

A girl goes out under blue skies, skies clearly blue, but accented with a flock of blackbirds.

But is it always blue?

THEY SAY THE SEA IS BLUE, TOO.
BUT WHEN I HOLD IT IN MY HAND,
IT'S CLEAR AS GLASS.

When a child goes forth, there are many things to wonder about. The girl wonders if blue whales are really blue. She's never seen a one (although as she takes a swim in the sea, there is one beneath her, unseen, a dark shape beneath the dark blue waters). And as she moves through the landscape, what she sees seems to morph in front of her eyes. The sea of grass in the field seems like an ocean she could sail upon, but it is not what she imagines it to be.

IT'S JUST PLAIN OLD YELLOW GRASS.

But then the girl marvels at a flower and spots a tree, and she's off again in a vivid fantasy of herself becoming a tree, with spreading limbs and fingers changing to leaves.

As the poet Walt Whitman wrote, "There was a child went forth every day. And the first object he look'd upon, that object he became...." Caldecott Honor winner, (for her This One Summer, Jillian Tamaki's They Say Blue (Abrams, 2018) is a picture essay upon that theme. With ink-line drawings set off by gorgeous swirls of colors, both cool blues and greens and and warm reds and golds, as the child blends with the seasonal changes in the landscapes around her and returns at last to her room, anchored, full-circle, by the blue of the coverlet on her bed, where her mother braids her hair as dark crows wheel through the red of the setting sun. This is a quiet book for thoughtful moments of pondering our outer and inner worlds. School Library Journal stars this one and says, "Attuned to a child's psychology and patterns of critical thinking, this visually stunning work is a must-purchase for libraries."

Color Me A Rainbow: Penguins Love Color by Sarah Aspinall

ONCE THERE WERE SIX LITTLE PENGUINS THAT LOVED COLORS.

And it's no wonder. Mama Penguin loves colorful flowers and has named her six chicks after her favorites.

TULIP, TIGER LILY, DANDELION, BLUEBELL, AND BROCCOLI!

(Yes. Broccoli is technically the edible flowering part of the plant!)

And not only that--each one has a matching color hat!

So one day the little penguins decide to paint Mama some surprise pictures of her favorite flowers. They pull out the paints and brushes and have at it, getting their paints all over themselves and the white ice and snow all around them. It's a mad muddle of messy colors. Mama Penguin loves her surprise portraits of her little penguins, but... she's still Mama:

"SIX LITTLE PENGUINS, YOU NEED A BATH!"

If anyone needs more color in their lives, it has to be penguins! They're black and white and live in a world of snow and ice!

And in Sarah Aspinall's new Penguins Love Colors (Scholastic Press, 2016), there's more than enough color to brighten up the Antarctic in Aspinall's eye-catching picture book, exceptional for its ebullient and enticing illustrations of penguin chicks wearing their color-coordinated little berets. It's a simple story with an effusive look at the captivating powers of contrast, with the flowery shades against black and white characters, as cute as they can be.