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A review by hypops
They Say Blue by Jillian Tamaki
4.0
Because good books for young children must improve with repeated readings and must sound better read aloud than read silently to oneself, there is a profound lyricism to the best children's literature. Words can seem to read themselves into life and illustrations carry your eye easily from page to page.
Jillian Tamaki's They Say Blue makes that lyricism an almost literal "passage" through the book. The main character is shown in a fashion resembling Etienne Jules Marey's motion photographs from the late 19th century (multiple exposures of people and animals in motion on a single plate). She almost seems to float across each page. It is a meditation on color that is also a meditation on transformation (color to color, season to season, vision to vision, object to object). Color transitions parallel changes in subject, weather, and/or place, and as the book goes on, the speaker develops an emotional longing or ache for enchantment and beauty.
These are heavy feelings for a book aimed at very young audiences. But it's also a testament to Tamaki's skill as a storyteller and artist that it never seems like too much. The colors and illustrated transformations are done so beautifully, vividly, and memorably that it all is alluringly dreamlike, despite being about the inevitability of disillusionment and the unavoidable loss of wonder.
Jillian Tamaki's They Say Blue makes that lyricism an almost literal "passage" through the book. The main character is shown in a fashion resembling Etienne Jules Marey's motion photographs from the late 19th century (multiple exposures of people and animals in motion on a single plate). She almost seems to float across each page. It is a meditation on color that is also a meditation on transformation (color to color, season to season, vision to vision, object to object). Color transitions parallel changes in subject, weather, and/or place, and as the book goes on, the speaker develops an emotional longing or ache for enchantment and beauty.
These are heavy feelings for a book aimed at very young audiences. But it's also a testament to Tamaki's skill as a storyteller and artist that it never seems like too much. The colors and illustrated transformations are done so beautifully, vividly, and memorably that it all is alluringly dreamlike, despite being about the inevitability of disillusionment and the unavoidable loss of wonder.