I Feel Orange Today

Jean Free, formerly an elementary-school teacher-librarian, is currently
a library consultant in Ontario.

Days are different colors: orange if you’re “sitting at the beach,
hot and salty,” red “when you call the teacher Mom by mistake,” or
grey if you “don’t want to think or do anything.” “But most days
are really a rainbow.” I Feel Orange Today expresses emotions that a
preschool/kindergarten-age child might experience when relating to nine
different colors. The book ends with the philosophical observation that
most days are a little bit of everything.

Patricia Godwin’s charming story reads like poetry, with its precise
language and lovely images. Young readers could easily extend the
author’s ideas to give their personal response, in art or writing, to
other colors. Kitty Macaulay’s detailed and entertaining illustrations
will entrance youngsters as they examine them again and again. Highly
recommended.