Hervé Tullet

First sentence: Ready? Place your hand here. Close your eyes. Concentrate. Wiggle your fingers gently to warm them up. Heads up, your turn now....

Premise/plot: This is an "interactive" book that may [or may not] appeal to young children. It invites them to follow the instructions of the book, be directed by the illustrations. It is written in second person, present tense.

My thoughts: I may not be the right audience for this one. I wanted to be. I just wasn't. I do think it has potential to appeal to young ones. (As do most books). I think if there was more tapping and less swooshing or sweeping, it might have been more enjoyable to me.… (more)

After reading Press Here! by Hervé Tullet, I had to read the sequel, Mix it Up! Mix it Up! uses the same interactive elements of rubbing, smudging, tilting, closing, and opening the book as the original but adds in the more complicated task of mixing the colors. In this way, there is an educational aspect instead of just a fun book.

As you turn the pages and perform the tasks, the colors are mixed, and a new color is introduced. The book goes through all of the primary color combinations and then tests the reader. I really like this non-messy way of learning about mixing colors, and I wanted to get my paints out to play some more. Even as an adult, I loved the interactive element. My sensory-seeking, will-not-sit-still son loved it more.

A word of caution: Read the book on your own first so you can guide the mixing, especially if your child doesn't know their colors yet. The book will only be correct or make sense if the correct colors are mixed. You want to teach the right thing!

This book would be good for teaching colors and color combinations, such as for art or science class. The obvious follow-up is painting a canvas and mixing colors. This could be a good review before that.

Recommended age: 4-6 years

Writing style: The words are actions directed to the reader, like "Are you ready?" and "Yes! You've got the magic touch!" Admittedly, I only read some of them because we wanted to perform the actions too quickly. I also had to add extra words like "Oh, it's purple. Blue mixed with red make purple."

Lexile range (unofficial): 210L - 400L
Decoding difficulty: 2/5
Vocabulary difficulty: 3/5
Sentences difficulty: 2/5
Patterns difficulty: 4/5

Illustration style: It's finger paint, complete with fingerprints and smudges.

Reality-based: It felt like painting and mixing colors, but a mess I needed to clean up after.… (more)