Of Colors and Things
A teacher’s look at why this book belongs in the Page Grabbers stage.
Why it fits Page Grabbers (for young toddlers who treat books as things to do)
Photographic grids of real objects sorted by color. It reads like a Montessori sorting tray in book form. Wordless, so the toddler does the naming - which is the point.
What makes it special
Hoban's photographic grids sort real objects by color like a Montessori tray you can't spill. The wordless format hands the naming job to the child — the book listens rather than lectures. Its quiet, museum-like calm is a small rebellion against the noisy toy aisle.
From the publisher
Photographs of toys, food, and other common objects are grouped on each page according to…
About Tana Hoban
Tana Hoban (1917-2006) was an American photographer who built a career in commercial photography, specializing in pictures of children, and taught photography at the University of Pennsylvania from 1966 to 1969. Beginning in 1970, when she was 53, she wrote, designed and photographed more than 110 books for children, many of them wordless, using photographs to teach shapes, colors, numbers and opposites.
Hoban traced her start to a Bank Street School project in which children asked what they had noticed on the way to school could remember nothing, until they were handed cameras and began paying attention. The question she then asked herself was: 'What is there, right there where I'm standing that I'm not seeing?'
Also by this author: Black on White · Of Colors and Things · Shapes, Shapes, Shapes
More from “Point and Name”
This book is part of The Best Books for Toddlers: 30 Teacher Picks (Page Grabbers) in our guide The Best Children’s Books by Age — 120 books chosen by the Montessori-certified teachers at Creative Minds Montessori in Frisco, TX. Come see how we build readers →
Nobody paid for this review — not the author, not the publisher — and the store link above earns us nothing. Our only interest is the reader this book fits.