All the Colors of the Earth

by Sheila Hamanaka (Author) Sheila Hamanaka (Illustrator)

All the Colors of the Earth
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Reading Level: K − 1st Grade
cms Common Sense Media Review

Celebrate the colors of children and the colors of love--not black or white or yellow or red, but roaring brown, whispering gold, tinkling pink, and more. Sheila Hamanaka's All the Colors of the Earth is a classic to share alongside such favorites as We're Different, We're the Same, All Are Welcome, and The World Needs More Purple People.

This beautifully illustrated book celebrates the beauty of diversity to the fullest through engaging, rhyming text, commented Charnaie Gordon in her Brightly review. All the Colors of the Earth would be a wonderful book to use in multicultural classrooms in schools.

"How better to celebrate ethnic diversity than to look to children, the hope of the future? This glorious picture book does just that."--Booklist

"A poetic picture book and an exemplary work of art. The simple text describes children's skin tones and hair in terms of natural phenomena and then describes love for these children with rich colors and flavors. A celebration of diversity." --School Library Journal

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School Library Journal

Starred Review
Gr 1-4-A poetic picture book and an exemplary work of art. The simple text describes children's skin tones and hair in terms of natural phenomena (."..the roaring browns of bears"; ."..hair that curls like sleeping cats in snoozy cat colors") and then describes love for these children with rich colors and flavors (."..love comes in cinnamon, walnut, and wheat..."). Hamanaka's oil paintings are all double-page spreads filled with the colors of earth, sky, and water, and the texture of the artist's canvas shines through. The text is arranged in undulant waves across each painting. This might be paired with Arnold Adoff's Black Is Brown Is Tan (HarperCollins, 1973), for younger readers, or his All the Colors of the Race (Lothrop, 1982), for older students, or read alone in celebration of diversity.-Barbara Chatton, College of Education, University of Wyoming, Laramie

Publishers Weekly

With her lyrical text and splendid oil paintings, Hamanaka ( The Journey; Screen of Frogs ) offers a hymn to children everywhere, who are "all the colors of the earth and sky and sea." Extraordinary, light-filled paintings accompany the single curving line of text on each page. A girl whose complexion is described as the "crackling russets of fallen leaves" turns a cartwheel in a sparkling autumnal scene. An Asian boy stares into the eyes of a lion, and both subjects are the color of the "whispering golds of late summer grasses." Two bronze-haired boys play at the seashore, their skin the color of "the tinkling pinks of tiny seashells by the rumbling sea." Hamanaka salutes the varieties of "hair that flows like water" and "hair like bouncy baby lambs." She shows adults showering children with love that "comes in cinnamon, walnut, and wheat," and "amber and ivory and ginger and sweet." These joyful illustrations amply celebrate the richness and diversity of the world's ethnic heritages. All ages. (Aug.)

Review quotes

With her lyrical text and splendid oil paintings, Hamanaka offers a hymn to children everywhere... Extraordinary, light-filled paintings accompany the single curving line of text on each page... These joyful illustrations amply celebrate the richness and diversity of the world's ethnic heritages.—Publishers Weekly
Classification
Fiction
ISBN-13
9780688170622
Lexile Measure
540
Guided Reading Level
-
Publisher
HarperCollins
Publication date
December 01, 2020
Series
-
BISAC categories
JUV000000 - Juvenile Fiction | General
Library of Congress categories
Stories in rhyme
Children
Brotherliness

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