Why Is Blue Dog Blue? - Hardcover

Rodrigue, George; Goldstone, Bruce

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1584791624 ISBN 13: 9781584791621

Publisher: Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2002

Synopsis

Why Is Blue Dog Blue? is the perfect picture book for animal-loving children to learn their colors!

Blue Dog’s creator, George Rodrigue, combines playful puns with new whimsical Blue Dog silkscreens to help readers learn all about colors and the reasoning behind art.

From basic primary and secondary to the exotic ones most color primers ignore, this book is a fun-filled demonstration of how artists use color to enrich their art.

Children and adults alike will be surprised by this imaginative and expansive explanation of Blue Dog’s color. And by the end of the book, they will see that the artist’s reasoning is both logical and magical: Blue Dog simply had to be blue.

About this title

About the Author

George Rodrigue is the creator of Blue Dog, now an international pop icon. He maintains two galleries, one in New Orleans, Louisiana, and one in Carmel, California. For many years, the artist has visited with school groups across the United States. His website spotlights the artistic talents of kids.

 

Bruce Goldstone is a children’s book author and coauthor, with Marcel Marceau, of Bip in a Book (Abrams). He lives in New York City surrounded by his multicolored menagerie: lime-green and yellow parakeet feathers, black and brown dog fur, and white and orange cat hair.

Reviews

Ages 4-8. Cajun artist George Rodrigue first painted his distinctive, blueberry-colored pooch in 1984. Since then, Blue Dog has become a pop icon, the subject of several books by the author and many canvasses loved by both celebrities and the story-hour set, the audience for this picture book. Here, Rodrigue answers the title question by explaining that Blue Dog's color depends on what the artist is doing: when Rodrigue goes fishing, he paints the dog a salmon color; when Rodrigue wants a hot dog, he paints the dog mustard yellow, and so on. The text seems mostly a vehicle for introducing colors that belong in an upscale clothing catalogue (alabaster, emerald), and an unsatisfying quasi-cosmic remark finally answers the title question. Despite the problems, young Blue Dog fans will enjoy seeing their favorite pup dressed in different colors, and Rodrigue's liberating reminder that "Artists don't have to paint things the way they really are" may inspire kids to discover new colors and use them creatively. Gillian Engberg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Abrams Books for Young Readers
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1584791624
• ISBN 13: 9781584791621
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 40