Product Description

What would you be if you were green?
Or red?
Or blue?
Or yellow?
Would you still be you?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #625284 in Books
• Published on: 2007-01-30
• Released on: 2007-01-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 32 pages

From School Library Journal
PreSchool-Grade 2—"If you could be...?" is an often-asked question by a child. What would you be if you were something other than yourself? And if you were that other thing, would you still be you? Kuskin poses these questions throughout this playfully thoughtful book. In delicious rhythmic language, readers are asked what they might be if they were the color green or a square shape, soft or loud, small, red, or fierce, and more. Possible answers are considered after each question, answers as familiar as "the sound of thunder at night" and as quirky as "an acrobat's tights with a hole in the knee." Children will enjoy considering the many possibilities prompted by each question and will most certainly be eager to add their own responses to the list. The warm illustrations have a soft, smudged, crayonlike effect that renders the most impossible query and response accessible. Portions of the text were published previously in 1960. Such an engaging invitation to explore the world and tickle the imagination is most definitely worth a second visit.—Susan Moorhead, New Rochelle Public Library, NY
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Kuskin offers more winning poetry in this cheerful picture book that is sure to inspire loud crowd participation. The rhyming text is a game of hypothetical questions: "If you could be soft / would you be the snow / or twenty-five pillows / or breezes that blow / the blossoms that fall from / the sassafras tree? / Tell me, sweet soft one, / what would you be?" More questions follow, each representing a different quality--loud, fierce, small, green, blue, bright, and so on. Lines in expertly modulated rhyme and meter encourage children to imagine themselves as everything from a tiny "mouse's house's front door key" to the whole of the sky, and the parade of images, both profound and silly, are nicely extended in Iwai's bright, fanciful acrylic paintings. As in so much of Kuskin's work, the enjoyable, even hypnotic sounds and the meaning of the words reinforce each other beautifully; "If you could be loud," for example, is followed by forceful lines that demand a strong, assertive voice: "thunder at night," the "howl of a hound," "the pound of the sea." Sure to be a read-aloud favorite, this will also be an excellent choice for elementary poetry units; it may well inspire students to write their own verses about infinite possibilities. Gillian Engberg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author

Karla Kuskin has written over fifty books for children, including the Philharmonic Gets Dressed, Under My Hood I Have a Hat, and Moon, Have You Met My Mother? She is also the winner of the NCTE Award for Excellence in Poetry, among other honors. Karla Kuskin lives in Brooklyn, New York, and Bainbridge Island, Washington. And if she were green, she would most definitely be a bean.

Customer Reviews

rich colorful pictures, good learning tool
I think I liked this book better than my son did. There isn't a storyline, but its a wonderful tool for teaching the concept of simile to a child. The colors are rich and the text nicely descriptive.

Great book!!
I didn't buy this book yet, but I checked it out from the library...my 1 1/2 year old loved it! She wanted to read it every night, again and again. I unfortunately had to return it to the library and she still asks for it...I'll have to buy a copy!

great!
This is a really sweet book about what color you would be if you could be. There's a little boy in every picture, somewhere, and we had a lot of fun finding him!