Making Colour and a Book Review: The Colour Thief by Gabriel Alborozo

28th July 2014 No Comments

Last week we went off to the National Gallery to have a look at their Making Colour exhibition. This in itself proved a little bit of a challenge because their website would only let me book 2 children’s tickets for each adult ticket and since there was one of me and 3 children I wasn’t convinced I’d be able to even get into the exhibition.

The exhibition itself looks at different colours and pigments in paint. We learnt all about the colour wheel and the best use of colour, how some pigments have faded and changed the look of paintings as we see them today. We also learnt how some visitors to galleries are not at all tolerant of children and I was really shocked to hear some ladies saying that they thought it disgusting that we had brought our children into an art gallery and that they would ask for their money back. A discussion about this is an entire blog post in itself and to be honest, I’m still feeling the rage and re-running what I should have said to these two old bags.

The children did really enjoy the exhibition and I think it was a great learning experience for them given the amount of conversations we have had about it since. As a result I’ve been keeping an eye out for suitable books for them. Perhaps the best factual book I’ve come across is The Usborne Art Book about Colour. The book also broadly follows a similar format to the  exhibition so its very useful for follow up activities.

And so it was with perfect timing that The Colour Thief by Gabriel Alborozo arrived for us to have a look at. This is the story of a little alien called Zot that lives in a world without colour. He comes to visit the distant planet he sees from his colourless planet and takes the colour. This is quite an unusual and interesting story and we loved the little twist at the end.

For us, this was a really valuable book as it enabled me to build on our experiences at the Making Colour exhibition and it linked in really nicely. I couldn’t have asked for a better bedtime read really!

In terms of the actual book it is printed on really nice matt paper and has a lovely hard back cover. The illustrations have a lovely feel about them and they are in a lovely  colour palette.

If you are thinking about colour with your children then this is an ideal book. The story is so unusual that I think that it would make a wonderful addition to your bookshelf.

If you want to find out more have a look here.

Disclaimer: We were sent this book for review purposes

Claire Walsh

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