Little Green Peas: A Big Book of Colors by Keith Baker

Little Green Peas: A Big Book of Colors by Keith Baker

Rating: 5 stars

I think that Keith Baker's (wonderful) mission is to increase our children's attention span, one book at a time.  Or one book-sitting at a time.  I've been a fan of his peas book since LMNO Peas came out over four years ago. In that book, huge illustrations with a million peas doing a million different, funny things completely won me and my kids over.

This book is different only because there is one more kid around me to win over, and…well, Kiefer loves Little Green Peas: A Big Book of Colors just as much as the first one, which we check out every other month, easily.  Only Kiefer wishes that the whole book would be in orange.  (I am trying to explain to him how that would defeat the purpose of having a book on colors…)

Much to Kiefer's chagrin, each color gets two giant double-page spreads dedicated to it.  On the first page is the color, spelled out in enormous letters, with peas all around it, doing neat things.  Turn the page and you get a scene with that color as the main focus, with even more peas doing even more neat things.  There is so much to absorb…that's where the increased attention span comes in.

Wait until you see what Green grows into...

If you're familiar with his two previous books involving a whole lot of peas, you won't be surprised that the text is perfectly sparse, rhymes nicely, and is really just the lead-in to his bright, colorful, and incredibly detailed illustrations of peas doing…well, a little bit of everything.   Kiefer is learning the alphabet, so the huge letters that spell out each color are wonderful additions for his age group (he's three).  My kids could spend five minutes on each page, sitting together to point out the obvious (they're good at that), what each pea is doing, but also to choose which pea they'd be if they could jump into the book.

(I'll be the sun-bathing pea, please…)

This is a wonderful, wonderful book.  My only question that I have: is there a ladybug on each scene, hidden, for kids to find?  We looked at this book at a bookstore, and I am annoyed I didn't remember to look.  And, I'm curious… I'm hoping the answer is yes, because that little addition of a ladybug hunt was such a delightful addition to the last two books…!