As with most of Eric Carle's work, this beautifully conceived picture book is deceptively simple.
"I am an artist and I paint...," the book begins. A boy applies blue paint to a virgin gold background. His palette of many colors appears on a gray table beside him. A turn of the page reveals the completed composition: "a blue horse" with a black mane. He follows with a painting of a red crocodile against a white background with a band of teal blue at the top to indicate its aquatic habitat. Next comes a saturated portrait of a yellow cow. Carle fills the background with deep dark blues and greens, and dots the sky with stars. The golden hues of the cow pulse against the night sky. Thus he introduces the three primary colors: blue, red and yellow.
But this is not an art lesson in the standard sense; he doesn't follow next with binary and tertiary colors (though they do appear here). Carle's book urges children to break the rules when it comes to creativity. He stays true to the animals' musculature and defining features, then populates the pages with a pink rabbit, a black polar bear and a polka-dotted donkey.
This book (which Carle calls an "homage to Franz Marc," who painted Blue Horse I at the turn of the 20th century) teaches children to trust their own unique perceptions, and to render the world as they see it. Know the rules, Carle seems to say, and then make them yours. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness