Rainbow Joe and Me
by Maria Strom (Author) Maria Strom (Illustrator)
A girl learns the power of imagination from her blind neighbor.
Eloise likes colors. Her friend, Rainbow Joe, likes colors, too. But Rainbow Joe is blind, so Eloise tells him about the colors she mixes and the fantastic animals she paints. When Rainbow Joe says he can also imagine and mix colors, Eloise is puzzled. How can a blind man see colors? she wonders. Little does Eloise know, Rainbow Joe is planning a surprise to show her his special colors. What she finds is a whole new way of seeing the world.
Maria Diaz Strom, in her picture book debut, tells an endearing story that celebrates friendship and the power of imagination.
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ALA/Booklist
Ages 6-8. A blind musician shows a child new ways of creating colors in this exuberant debut. Silver-haired Joe listens as young Eloise chatters about how she mixes colors to paint pink fish, purple monkeys, and olive elephants. Promising his young friend a surprise, Joe talks about the colors in his head. Puzzled, Eloise tries mixing paints with her eyes closed but comes up with only gray. Then one day after church, Joe produces a saxophone--and out of it burst "strong red notes and little yellow notes," followed by "long, lazy green" ones in a toe-tapping rainbow. Strom uses bright colors in her artwork, too, and although her African American characters' faces bear fixed smiles, the radiant blues and browns and oranges she has chosen fire her simply composed urban scenes with joie de vivre. Heighten budding painters' awareness of the possibilities of color with this chromatic symphony, or use it to preface Chris Raschka's more sophisticated connections of color and music, Charlie Parker Played Be-Bop (1992) and Mysterious Thelonius (1997).
Copyright 1999 Booklist, LLC Used with permission.
Kirkus
Strom debuts with an determinedly exuberant book about a cool young African-American artist, Eloise, whose fondness for bold colors and boldly outlined shapes is happily echoed in the full-bleed acrylic spreads. Mama tells Eloise not to bother Joe when the two talk on the front steps, but it's hard for EIoise to contain her eagerness to tell her elderly friend about her paintings. Far from bothered, the blind man she calls Rainbow Joe for reasons apparent only at book's end loves to listen; he approves of her imagination. Rainbow Joe claims to make the colors he sees in his head. "I know how to make them sing," he says early on. "One of these days I'm going to show you." Eloise's knowledge of the color wheel, which she shares incrementally with readers, tells her that vision is needed to mix colors. Even Mama says the only color a blind person can achieve is muddy gray. It isn't until Joe unpacks his saxophone and plays colors that Mama and Eloise can see them. This exploration of sensory differences and similarities is enlightening and enchanting.
Copyright 1999 Kirkus Reviews, LLC Used with permission.
Maria Diaz Strom makes her debut as an author and illustrator with Rainbow Joe and Me. A native of Portland, Oregon, she studied art at Portland State University and has illustrated several children's educational books. Until recently, Ms. Strom taught art at the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired. She was inspired to create this book by her students and by her husband's love of jazz. She and her husband now live in San Francisco.
Music
People with disabilities
Blind
Saxophone
