WASHINGTON POST – Featured Special– October 15, 2018
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BLUE
by Laura Vaccaro Seeger (Roaring Brook)

In this not-quite wordless, evocatively illustrated book, Laura Vaccaro Seeger explores the idea of blue as a color and as a feeling, with its themes of loyalty, sadness, calm and hope. A very young boy and a puppy sleep, sharing a comforting piece of baby-blue blanket. A slightly bigger puppy exits the scene of bright yellow paint spilled across a child’s blue painting. Boy and dog play together at the beach as ocean-blue waves roll invitingly toward them. Seeger’s rich, layered acrylic paintings and 16 two-word phrases form a poem about a particularly sweet lifelong friendship. Inserted subtly into each page is a die-cut peek into the next shade of blue, cleverly forming a narrative continuity with the pictures and coaxing the reader to anticipate what comes next. With its gentle portrayal of love and loss and its deep sense of emotion, “Blue”(Roaring Brook, Ages 3 to 6 ) will resonate with readers in a way that is musical, meditative and reassuring.

— Kathie Meizner