Blue by Laura Vaccaro Seeger

Today's guest contributor is Kahla Gubanich, a children's and maker librarian at Carroll County Public Library in Maryland.

Laura Vaccaro Seeger's Blue, a companion to the beloved Green, is a moving depiction of a lasting friendship through the lens of a single color. The book opens with the snuggly image of a sleeping baby boy and a golden puppy, each touching the corner of a baby blue handkerchief (an item that the two will share throughout the book). Each page turn reveals a new shade of blue and another touching moment with the boy and his puppy. They play together, picking blueberries, splashing through crisp blue water, and snuggling together under the dusky blue of a small tent.

It quickly becomes clear that both are growing up, growing older. There is an emotional sequence in which the boy, now a young man, must deal with the loss of a best friend and the vast blue grief that follows. But like the small die cuts on each page that reveal a sliver of the next shade of blue, this story looks forward even as it lingers on moments both happy and sad. At the end the boy meets a girl with her dog, and there is joy in a new friendship.

There are plenty of opportunities here for beginning readers to stretch their wings with more difficult words like "ocean" and "midnight," while finding familiar comfort on each page with the repetition of the word "blue." There are no sentences, only names for each shade of blue, which may pose a challenge to very young readers looking for structural clues like capitalization and punctuation. Yet the illustrations provide a strong foundation for making meaning of the story. Some images illustrate a more familiar, concrete concept, like "sky blue" or "berry blue."

Other blues are more abstract and encourage consideration, but the illustrations offer context. For example, the page labeled "maybe blue" depicts the boy's painting of himself and his puppy, but the pup has tracked yellow paint across the paper, mixing blue and yellow. The phrases "very blue" and "so blue" connote vastly different meanings as a result of the accompanying images: a bright flurry of butterflies, and a deep sunset full of grief, respectively. While this book certainly works as a quick read, young readers who take their time exploring each page will gain rich experience decoding the interplay between text and image. It's rare that so few words can elicit such a range of emotion, but Blue is a treasure that can be enjoyed by both experienced and inexperienced readers alike.