Why Is Blue Dog Blue?

As a New Orleans native I gravitated towards this book because of its tie in to Louisiana and it's culture. A sweet touch is the book opening up with the artist, George, introducing himself and talking about painting. Then, it goes into the meat of the book talking about the painting of blue dog and why he is blue. Through the use of blue dog as a constant George explores the colors in the book. It then weaves together colors and thing that a reader, or the author, associates with a certain thing. Such as the color salmon when fishing and the color of mustard when eating a hot dog.
This book goes beyond the realm of just talking about colors and starts to get children to think about how they see colors and what is associated with show more certain things. It takes that step further and immerses children mind in the study of colors.
A great book to use when studying New Orleans, the people, and culture. Or a fun book to read to an art class. show less

Why Is Blue Dog Blue by George Rodrigue is a book filled with a colors. It asks one simple question, "Why Is Blue Dog Blue?" Rodrigue then explains that as an artist, he does not have to have a method to his madness. He often does, but it is not always the case. He goes on to list reasons why he would paint the Blue Dog whatever color. Rodrigue uses eye-capturing pictures and lists the names of the colors to teach kids to match colors with words. I think that this is a great picture to read to kids because while reading you are teaching them color recognition and also animal recognition.

This is a concept book for children, it is about colors and concepts. For instance: Blue Dog the color of a hot dog = Mustard; Blue Dog the color of the swamp = Moss Green; Blue dog the color a pie = Cherry Red.

George did not answer why or how she became Blue, just that he likes to paint Blue Dog and sometimes she is different colors. This is good for helping to teach children colors.

For those of you who are not familiar with Blue Dog, she was George Rodrigue's faithful companion, who when she died came back as Blue Dog. She also began appearing in his paintings as Blue Dog. There is an entire art book Blue Dog, and it is beautifully haunting and will tug at your heart strings.

24 months - Olivia likes this one as we've read it many time in the past week. I like the idea of the book, talking about where an artist gets their ideas and also talking about colors... But it's just not a book I'd buy or want to re-read a hundred times. I loves that he'd paint the dog mustard when he's thinking about hot dogs... But when thinking about the beach it's tan... Why not sand... at least that's what I expected it to be. Oh well still fun.

The best thing about Why Is Blue Dog Blue? is that it is written by George Rodrigue. Rodrigue is the artist who paints the Blue Dog painting. I like the exploration of color which is the focus of the book. At the end of the book he includes paw prints illustrating more sophisticated colors. It is a beautiful book. This book would interest Pre-K to second graders. I would use it with a unit on artists, or styles of art.

George Rodrigue is a celebrated artist of New Orleans due to his Cajun roots. I really like the different color and size text. Small children will enjoy all the colors and shapes and older children will enjoy guessing why the blue dog is blue.

This is a cute book to read to children especially if they are learning about colors. George Rodrigue offers different names to familiar colors. It would very useful in a classroom where children are familiar with the Blue Dog.