The Color Monster: A Story About Emotions

The Color Monster, written and illustrated by Anna Llenas, is a story about a monster whose emotions get “all mixed up” inside him, and Nuna, a girl who is able to help him “organize” his feelings.

The edition that I’ll be reviewing today is an engineered book—or a “pop-up” book. From each page, the “feeling” jumps out at the reader, giving the feelings literal dimension and highlighting their intensity and presence. There are also interactive sections, such as the pull-tabs on the jars that Nuna provides the Color Monster to use for separating his emotions.

The illustrator opted for a multimedia approach for the art in this book, using media such as paper cutouts, crayon drawings, strings, and watercolor to complete show more each page. The use of color is central to the theme of big feelings, each one is represented by a dominant color: blue for sadness, yellow for happiness, red for anger, black/grey for fear, green for calm, and pink for love. These colors fill their respective pages, underlining just how big emotions can feel sometimes. Lack of color is also a tool used by the illustrator, as Nuna is depicted in grey, black, and white. This represents Nuna’s role as a guiding character who has control of her feelings and therefore, is not "colored" by them.

Overall, I think that The Color Monster is an excellent option for starting conversations with children about the power of emotions and how important it is that we not only feel them, but that we learn how to separate and identify them. show less

The Color Monster: A Pop-Up Book of Feelings, by Anna Llenas, is an incredible tool used for children to understand their emotions. The book uses colors as a metaphor, representing each emotion. The story follows a girl who is helping a friend, the color monster, understand each emotion and regulate them. This book serves as both a literary and visual tool through it's simple tale and it's engaging pop-ups.
The use of color is prevalent, as it's used to illustrate each emotion. With each pop-up is an entirely new page that uses it's art perfectly to represent what each emotion feels like. The art on each page is very tactile and incredibly immersive. I enjoyed reading this book, it felt quite nostalgic to be reading a pop-up book this cool!

Leí este cuento durante una clase y la verdad lo encontré bastante adorable. El monstruo no sabe lo que le pasa y muchos niños tampoco lo saben, están llenos de emociones que no tienen un nombre y no tienen una comprensión y al darle un color, al darle una descripción de acuerdo a ese color se abre una oportunidad muy simple para explicar algo tan complejo.
Estamos en tiempos donde cuesta mucho explicar lo que uno siente, el hacerlo con colores es un buen método para que un niño lo pueda comprender de a poco, conocer las emociones y conocerse a el mismo.
Lo recomiendo académicamente y también, cuando no se sepa explicar el peso de las emociones, lo importante del autoconocimiento y el estar cercanos con nuestro interior.

The color monster woke up all mixed up one day. A little girl decides to try to help the Color Monster separate all the different colors so that he can make sense of how he’s feeling. They go through each color/ emotion, describing how they make you feel. They sort each emotion into its own jar after talking about it. At the end, color monster is pink, and the illustrations are doodles of big pink flowers. The last page asks the color monster how he is feeling now, and it is up to the reader to identify the emotion they think it is. I feel like that was a really creative ending that allows readers to apply what they learned along with what they know from their own experiences. This book would be a fantastic choice for a read-aloud show more with younger kids because there is a lot of room for discussion about emotions. The illustrations are very childlike, made up of doodles, scribbles, and what looks like cutouts. Scribbles are big, harsh, and all over the page on pages like afraid, and they are softer and stay in the lines on pages such as calm. I loved how visual and expressive this book is; the illustrations really complement the text perfectly. show less

This story follows the Color Monster as a little girl helps him identify and label his emotions by relating them to different colors. This process helps Color Monster learn more about himself and his emotions.

The Color Monster is an adorable book with simple, yet effective, illustrations that teaches kids how to name what they are feeling. I like that it promotes emotional awareness and encourages children to notice their emotions, but I'm not sure that telling children to "bottle up" their feelings as they identify them is a great message to send. Overall, this is a pretty good book, especially for elementary school students, but it should probably be paired with another text about expressing emotions (not just acknowledging them).

Identifying and naming feelings is good. Putting them in jars is maybe not the best visual, though. Also, it's normal and ok to feel more than one thing at the same time. And can we just stop it with black being a "bad" color? Pop ups are fun and varied. Collage artwork is attractive.

This fun and exciting book gives insight to young children that teaches about managing feelings and emotion. It gives a fun idea that correlates with a child who picks a color for the emotion they are feeling and then we as adults need to teach them how to deal with these emotions in a positive and reassuring way.