Pistes d'exploration

Discuss the colours that we associate with different seasons. How might this differ in other climates?

Discuss the use of metaphor in the poem and explain how it helps the reader visualize the text.

Write a poem about your favourite season, including examples of the colours you associate with it.

Read one of the sections with a friend. Organize the poem into a poem for two voices and perform it for the class.

Talk about what you see on each page; about what you might hear, smell, taste and feel.

Sort the seasons and their associated colours and objects, using a graphic organizer. Use resources to find the meaning of new words.

Write and illustrate your own description of how you can hear, smell, taste and feel a colour.

My Blue Is Happy

Mots-clés

Poetry , colours , illustrations (collage) , life cycles , metaphors , seasons

Commentaire descriptif

This picture book may be enjoyed by readers of any age. Using the theme of colours, the language takes readers on a thoughtful journey through each season of the year: “In springeven the rain tastes green.” Startling and beautiful, this book is rich in poetic combinations of this sort. An autumn acorn is “Brown… a tiny round house,dolloped with roof.” While in winter, “Gray and Brown sway shyly,the only beauties left.” Readers will appreciate how colours return every season in new personas. Exquisite illustrations support the verses. Through dense colour, detailed textures and surreal imagery, they invent a world perfectly suited to the quiet demands of the language. An androgynous figure (in ever-changing crown and gown) travels through the seasons with a canine companion. In spring’s Blue, they fly kites through wispy clouds in a sunny sky, while running across green-gold patterned ground. A luminescent window screen illustrates summer’s Gray. Pressing against it is the “belly pale and soft” of a frog on the hunt, while white moths flutter to the light. Delicate and deep, powerful but gentle, this book offers a wonderful experience for readers with a broad range of skills and sophistication.