My Cold Plum Lemon Pie Bluesy Mood

Author: Brown, Tameka Fryer

Color: Sky/Pale blue

Edition: Illustrated

Format: Picture Book

Number Of Pages: 32

Details:

What color is your mood? On a really good day, Jamie feels purple like the first bite of a juicy cold plum. And with a crayon in his hand, Jamie eases into a green feeling--like a dragon dancing through a jungle made of green jello. But when his brothers push him around and make fun of his drawings, Jamie feels like a dark gray storm brewing. What will it take to put Jamie back in a bright-feeling mood? Through Jamie, young readers will learn to describe how they’re feeling in a unique way. My Cold Plum Lemon Pie Bluesy Mood is a 2014 Charlotte Zolotow Honor Book. From School Library Journal K-Gr 2-A boy describes each of the varying emotions he experiences in terms of color. Listening to music puts him in a purple kind of mood, while being evicted from the couch by his two bossy older brothers makes him feel gray. When his little sister asks him to draw a dragon, a gentle green feeling comes over him, which turns black when his siblings snatch the picture and tease: "Awww-it's cwayon time." The book could be paired with Dr. Seuss's My Many Colored Days (Knopf, 1996), which specifically discusses colors as they relate to moods, or Molly Bang's When Sophie Gets Angry, Really Really Angry (Scholastic, 1999), in which the palette reflects Sophie's changing emotions. Evans's digital collage illustrations, created with oil paints and graphite, effectively convey the mood/color correlation, although the shape of the children's mouths seems the same whether happy, sad, or angry.-Grace Oliff, Ann Blanche Smith School, Hillsdale, NJα(c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. From Booklist Remember mood rings? They could broadcast your mood by whatever color they turned. This young narrator also links his moods to color. He starts out in a purple mood: a “cold-plum eating / grape juice drinking . . . / bobbing to the beat kind of mood.” But when his brothers tell him to “move!” he goes “to a gray kind of place / storm brewing inside.” So it goes, his mood changing depending on what’s happening. The colors feel right on—orange does seem perfect for a game of basketball, and watery blue right for “sailing on waves / in the sky of my mind.” Throughout, there’s a running story line about an African American family. The narrator is hassled by his older brothers until he takes a stand. He is happy when his brothers, little sister, and parents are all together at dinnertime. The artwork—digital collage created with oil paints and graphite and suffused with the individual hues—captures what the narrator’s own art might look like. An excellent jumping-off point for discussion—or writing—about readers’ own colorful moods. Preschool-Grade 2. --Ilene Cooper

Reviews:

Praise for My Cold Plum Lemon Pie Bluesy Mood by Tameka Fryer Brown:

"In a free-wheeling style and going far beyond the usual pairings of colors with moods… a nicely sophisticated exploration.”

— Kirkus 

“It’s valuable both for its believable exposition of Jamie's interior world and for its warm portrait of the life of a nonwhite family in which sharing is essential, rules are followed, conflicts are resolved, and meals are enjoyed together.”

— Publishers Weekly

"An excellent jumping-off point for discussion—or writing—about readers’ own colorful moods."

— Booklist

About the Author:

Tameka Fryer Brown loves drawing with brand-new, super-sharp crayons like Jamie, and her favorite color is all the colors of the rainbow. Writing stories for kids puts her in a sweet, juicy, peachy kind of mood. Tameka lives with her family in Charlotte, North Carolina. Shane Evans is an artist, author, illustrator, musician, songwriter, and founder of Dream Studio, a community art space in Kansas City, Missouri, where he currently resides with his wife, daughter, and three dogs. In 2012, he became a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award winner for Undergr...

EAN: 9780670012855

Release Date: 07-03-2013

Languages: English

Item Condition: New

Binding: Hardcover