Remarkable picture book
Fear of the dark is probably too primal ever to be laid to rest altogether. It hovers in the background of “The Black Book of Colors,” an intellectually challenging, graphically remarkable picture book in which a Venezuelan author and illustrator, Menena Cottin and Rosana FarÃa, ask us to imagine being blind.
The illustrations of this elegant book, which received the New Horizons award at the 2007 Bologna Children’s Book Fair and has been chosen as a New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Book this year, appear on right-hand pages and consist of sleekly stylized black-on-black embossed graphics. The raised and textured schematic drawings of leaves, feathers and raindrops usher us into a world without color. On left-hand pages, spare lines of text are printed in flat white type against a solid black background beneath a Braille translation. Readers who turn to the last page can teach themselves the Braille alphabet, then go back and read the text by touch.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/09/books/review/Marcus-t.html?_r=0
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