SATA
ENTRY TYPE:
WORK TITLE: What is Color?
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://www.stevenweinbergstudio.com/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
LAST VOLUME: SATA 386
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1984; marred Casey Scieszka (an author).
EDUCATION:Colby College, bachelor’s degree, 2006.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Author, illustrator, and muralist. Spruceton Inn: A Catskills Bed and Bar, West Kill, NY, co-owner and co-operator of inn and artist residency. Cofounder of nonprofit organization Local Language Literacy.
AVOCATIONS:Travel.
AWARDS:YALSA Readers’ Choice Award, 2012, for To Timbuktu; Virginia Readers’ Choice Award, 2017, for You Must Be This Tall; Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection, 2019, for AstroNuts Mission One; Today Show’s Holiday Picks, 2021, for “Big Job” series; Parents Magazine Best Children’s Books citations, 2021, for Washer and Dryer’s Big Job.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Award-winning author and illustrator Steven Weinberg has earned a reputation for off-beat children’s books, such as Rex Finds an Egg! Egg! Egg!, You Must Be This Tall, and The Middle Kid, as well as the volumes of the “Big Jobs” series, which celebrate the essential work done by household appliances. “My mom was and is a youth librarian. That meant I spent a lot of time with kid’s books growing up,” Weinberg explained in an interview with Margaret Eby in Brooklyn magazine. “They never seemed like something you grew out of, so I kind of didn’t.” His characters, he told Eby, tend to be “little guys with a ton of heart stuck in the maelstrom of life who are trying their best to navigate it. I felt that way a lot as a kid. With Rex, and other kid’s books I have coming out, I want to stay true to that feeling.”
Weinberg met Casey Scieszka, his future partner in life and publishing, while at Colby College, where he majored in art as well as government. Weinberg drew a comic strip for the Echo, the campus newspaper, based on interviews with campus security, and he would become the paper’s editor-in-chief. Both Weinberg and Scieszka arrived in Morocco to attend a study-abroad program during their junior year, and they soon paired up for a series of globe-trotting adventures that would eventually be chronicled in To Timbuktu: Nine Countries, Two People, One True Story. Weinberg and Scieszka—daughter of renowned children’s book writer Jon Scieszka—signed up for six-month teaching jobs in Beijing, China, after earning their undergraduate degrees. Following that, they trekked through several countries in Southeast Asia before winding up in the West African nation of Mali, home to the ancient city of Timbuktu and the fabled place honored in their publishing debut.
Scieszka stayed in Mali through the funding of a Fulbright study grant that allowed her to research Islam, and Weinberg was happy to come along on her adventure. He kept a sketchbook chronicling their travels while she regularly updated her written journal, and the result was To Timbuktu. “Weinberg’s charcoally cartoon drawings,” wrote Ian Chipman in Booklist, “capture slice-of-life vignettes and depict the many people they met along the way.” A Publishers Weekly reviewer found the book “witty, perceptive, and candid,” adding that “Scieszka’s present-tense narrative catapults readers into each setting, as do Weinberg’s fluid cartoon sketches.” Some critics recommended To Timbuktu as a way to spark interest in foreign-study programs, while School Library Journal contributor Sharon Senser McKellar enjoyed the inner journeys that the couple also shares. “Often humorous, and occasionally heartbreaking, the book presents a lovely picture of the couple’s life together during this time,” McKellar wrote.
Weinberg’s self-illustrated titles, like those he has illustrated for other authors, have also attracted attention for their entertaining and innovative concepts. Fred & the Lumberjack, for instance, features a protagonist who is a beaver—but one who wears a red flannel hat and who accessorizes his den with bunk beds and video games. At the same time, however, Fred the beaver realizes that his home lacks something—but he is not sure what. “When a chainsaw-wielding, red-plaid-coat-wearing lumberjack roars into his life,” stated a Kirkus Reviews critic, “Fred realizes it’s not what he was missing but whom.” “Although Fred’s efforts to impress her go awry,” a Publishers Weekly reviewer explained, “the pair discovers a shared passion for woodworking (and flannel).”
Weinberg based some of the design concepts of Fred & the Lumberjack on the home of a beaver near his new forest residence in upstate New York. “This book came out of the move my wife Casey Scieszka and I made from Brooklyn to the Catskills about four years ago,” Weinberg explained in a Watch. Connect. Read interview. “We said goodbye to bagels, takeout Chinese, and our favorite bookstores, and moved to the end of a dead-end road in the countryside to open a small hotel called the Spruceton Inn: A Catskills Bed and Bar. This new life up in the woods … inspired this book.”
The volumes of the “Big Jobs” series, including Washer and Dryer’s Big Job, Fridge and Oven’s Big Job, and Dishwasher’s Big Job, demonstrate Weinberg’s flair for innovative design. “The books are sturdy (for those small hands), funny, and instantly child-friendly,” assessed a contributor to Seven Impossible Things before Breakfast. The contributor continued: “They are also engaging; Weinberg personifies these appliances as they demonstrate their roles in a household. There are no longer any newborns or toddlers in my life … but the moment I meet one (human baby, that is, not kitten), I will be thrusting these books at the wee child’s parent.” Fridge and Oven’s Big Job, the second volume in the series, stated a Kirkus Reviews contributor, is “a fun, novel concept perfect for little readers eager to learn about the uses of familiar domestic items.”
Weinberg examines family dynamics in The Middle Kid. The eponymous protagonist serves as punching bag for an older brother and scapegoat for a younger sister. Yet the middle child learns how to defuse situations through quality alone time and come together with the other members of the family. “Readers with siblings,” opined John Peters in Booklist, “will … see that time alone and time together both have their rewards.” The Middle Kid, concluded a Kirkus Reviews contributor, is “a worthy addition to collections in need of accessible, realistic graphic novel-like beginning readers.”
[open new]Weinberg delves into the essence of colors and how they are used to make art in his self-illustrated compendium What Is Color? The Global and Sometimes Gross Story of Pigments, Paint, and the Wondrous World of Art. His motivation for the book came from first discovering art history courses in college and realizing that the history of the world could be told through artworks and how they were made. Focusing on colors themselves, with the fundamental colors getting a chapter each, Weinberg discusses everything from the science behind them to substances used to create them—including crushed bugs and cow pee—to what they represent. Weinberg’s drawn dog Waldo helps lead the tour, which features abundant facts, asides, and illustrations. The closing chapter includes activities, maps, a glossary, recipes, and more.
Reflecting on composing What Is Color? with Betsy Bird of School Library Journal, Weinberg credited a middle-school history teacher, Ms. Kim, with devoting an entire class to all the different ways students can take notes—including with “cartoons and dumb jokes in the margins. (Ahem.)” Weinberg explained: “As a very disorganized kiddo, it blew my mind and gave me a permission structure to absorb information the way my brain works. Working now, I think that this is ONLY way I could have ever begun to both understand something like that electromagnetic spectrum, and then convey said knowledge to young readers. My struggle is always how to balance the truly important facts with a firehose of incredibly entertaining yet dubiously helpful gags.” Weinberg made a point of representing global diversity in his choice of artworks to highlight.
Reviewing What Is Color? In School Library Journal, Gloria Koster appreciated how “from the very start, readers are engaged in the exploration,” which proves “extensively researched and documented … yet conveys information simply and clearly.” Koster delighted in the “bright, hilarious” artwork, while in Booklist Kathleen McBroom affirmed that the “charming, humorous, and instructive illustrations … effectively enhance the text while showing Weinberg’s whimsical creativity.” A Kirkus Reviews writer proclaimed that Weinberg’s “valentine to colors is a globe-spanning tribute to art and its many forms of expression”—“a droll, effervescent, and wide-ranging work.”
Weinberg teamed up with Jon Scieszka himself to illustrate the “AstroNuts” series, which finds a team of hybrid animal astronauts—AstroWolf, LaserShark, SmartHawk, and StinkBug—searching for a temperate planet for humans to resettle on. The books are narrated by Earth, who laments no longer being habitable. A Publishers Weekly reviewer praised Weinberg’s digital collage art in Mission One, The Plant Planet, with energetic cartoon protagonists inspired by Quentin Blake and background engravings culled from Amsterdam’s Rijkmuseum, as “vivid.” Mission Three, The Perfect Planet, finds the foursome traveling back in time in hopes of preventing humans from discovering fire in the first place, but a wolves-humans olympiad awaits. A KIrkus Reviews writer hailed Weinberg’s collage art as “enthralling” and “dazzling, juxtaposing classic works of art with bold color splashes and zany, brightly colored characters.”[close new]
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, January 1, 2011, Ian Chipman, review of To Timbuktu: Nine Countries, Two People, One True Story, p. 70; August 1, 2019, Julia Smith, review of The Plant Planet, p. 80; March 15, 2021, John Peters, review of The Middle Kid, p. 57; July, 2024, Kathleen McBroom, review of What Is Color? The Global and Sometimes Gross Story of Pigments, Paint, and the Wondrous World of Art, p. 67.
Kirkus Reviews, November 1, 2014, review of Rex Finds an Egg! Egg! Egg!; February 1, 2016, review of You Must Be This Tall; March 15, 2016, review of Beard Boy; July 15, 2017, review of Fred & the Lumberjack; August 15, 2021, review of The Perfect Planet; December 15, 2021, review of Fridge and Oven’s Big Job; October 1, 2024, review of What Is Color?
Publishers Weekly, February 21, 2011, review of To Timbuktu, p. 135; December 15, 2014, review of Rex Finds an Egg! Egg! Egg!, p. 66; July 24, 2017, review of Fred & the Lumberjack, p. 57; November 27, 2019, review of The Plant Planet, p. 52.
School Library Journal, June, 2011, Sharon Senser McKellar, review of To Timbuktu, p. 146; January, 2021, Chance Lee Joyner, review of The Middle Kid, p. 61; July, 2024, Gloria Koster, review of What Is Color?, p. 77.
Voice of Youth Advocates, April, 2011, Molly Kritchen, review of To Timbuktu, p. 93.
ONLINE
Brooklyn, https://www.bkmag.com/ (February 5, 2015), Margaret Eby, “Steven Weinberg on His Children’s Book, Rex Finds an Egg.”
Colby News, https://news.colby.edu/ (February 28, 2024), Kayla Voigt, “Teaching Kids to Ask the Big Questions: Artist Steven Weinberg ’06 Takes an Interdisciplinary Approach to His Children’s Books.”
School Library Journal, https://afuse8production.slj.com/ (October 19, 2023), Betsy Bird, “What Is Color? From Squished Sea Snails to Flesh Eating Fashion, Steven Weinberg Discusses His Upcoming Informational Book.
Seven Impossible Things before Breakfast, http://blaine.org/ (November 14, 2021), “7-Imp’s 7 Kicks #769: Featuring Steven Weinberg.”
Steven Weinberg website, https://www.stevenweinbergstudio.com (January 4, 2025).
Watch. Connect. Read, http://mrschureads.blogspot.com/ (August 25, 2017), “3 Questions and 3 Sentence Starters with Steven Weinberg.”
Hi, I’m Steven.
I make books, paint mountains, fish and all over walls. I’m also half of the team behind The Spruceton Inn: a Catskills Bed and Bar (and artist residency!)
About Steven Weinberg
Steven Weinberg is a writer, illustrator, and painter in the Catskill Mountains of New York. His work has appeared everywhere from books to beer cans to the Smithsonian.
His children’s books have been called “brilliant” by Dave Pilkey, "thrillingly shameless" by the New York Times, "guaranteed to fuel read aloud energy" by Publisher's Weekly and have won awards and distinctions such as the Virginia Reader’s Choice Award (YOU MUST BE THIS TALL), YALSA Reader’s Choice (TO TIMBUKTU), the Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection (ASTRONUTS: MISSION ONE and THE MIDDLE KID), The Today Show’s Holiday Pick (BIG JOB SERIES), and Parents Magazine Best Children’s Book 2021 (WASHER & DRYER’S BIG JOB).
The fish have been featured on the cover of Thomas McGuane’s fly fishing classic THE LONGEST SILENCE, on West Kill Brewing’s “Brookie” lager, in Gray’s Sporting Journal, and are on display at Jimmy Kimmel’s fishing resort The South Fork Lodge.
Along with his wife Casey Scieszka, he owns and operates the Spruceton Inn: a Catskills Bed and Bar. Their annual Artist Residency has hosted more than 100 artists and counting.
I'm represented by Marcia Wernick at Wernick & Pratt.
For questions about kids' book appearances, painting trout, comissions, or really anything, please email me!
What Is Color? From Squished Sea Snails to Flesh Eating Fashion, Steven Weinberg Discusses His Upcoming Informational Book
October 19, 2023 by Betsy Bird Leave a Comment
Funny story. So way way back in November of 2021, author/illustrator Steven Weinberg wrote me to tell me about a project he was working on. He said:
“I’m currently dummying out a leviathan (about 100 pages) of a nonfiction kids book all about how color is made for Roaring Brook. Working title: MANGO PEE, DRAGON’S BLOOD AND SQUISHED SEA SNAILS. (Yes, all pigment sources!) I remember the copies of THE WAY THINGS WORK that I checked out from my school library. Those had been read and poured over so many times they were barely held together. (Well, I imagine librarians retaped them constantly.) I want this book to be Macauly-esque in terms of color.”
Well, I don’t want to spoil the ending of this story or anything, but the title with “Mango Pee” in it didn’t make the cut. The publisher did, however, think that this sounded like a pretty neat book. As such, they published it and now we have, on the horizon, an amazing nonfiction title for kids focused on color coming out in 2024.
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What Is Color?: The Global and Sometimes Gross Story of Pigments, Paint, and the Wondrous World of Art by Steven Weinberg is slated to arrive on our shelves in August of 2024. So far, its publisher (Roaring Brook) describes it this way:
“In this zany, inclusive, and vibrantly illustrated guide to all things color, the origins of today’s pigments come alive across continents and history, with oodles of art, tons of science–and extensive interactive backmatter!
So what is color? A red apple? A yellow banana? The purple goo from a squished sea snail?
Once you start digging, color turns out to be a lot of things – it’s messy, stinky, and even a little bit dangerous. You may already know that it’s art, but it’s science, too! What is Color will take readers all over the world, introducing them to talented, brilliant, creative people from scientists to famous artists and everyone in between as we take the color wheel for a spin.
Perfect for curious and creative minds who love paintbrushes as much as microscopes, this clever and eye-catching full-color nonfiction book dives deep into the strange, wacky, silly, and occasionally perilous history behind the colors that paint our everyday lives.
Readers will get:
A laugh-out-loud funny adventure full of gross-out facts (like how cow pee can be used to make the color yellow!).
Hilarious illustrations that encourage creativity and fun while learning!
A kid-friendly primer on global art history, from Yayoi Kusama to Van Gogh, Basquiat, and many more.
A dazzling full-color book, with rainbow edges and vibrant info-filled endpapers.
Extensive backmatter full of art and science activities perfect for the classroom and home!”
And if you know Steven, you know that this is just the tip of the iceberg. Me? I have seen the iceberg, my friends, and it is glorious. Today, allow me to talk to Steven about the book and everything that it entails.
Betsy Bird: Steven! I’m so freakin’ excited about this book you have coming out. And nonfiction too! I don’t recall you doing too much with that kind of book before, so tell me a little bit about where WHAT IS COLOR? came from. What was the impetus?
Steven Weinberg
Steven Weinberg: Thank you! Me too! Impetus-wise, I should probably cite the first colorful crayon I ever chewed on as a kid. But I think the idea of this really started to percolate when I was in college. I’d never taken any art history classes before and I remember this aha moment of OH WOW THIS THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD—IN PICTURES. I just loved how you could point to any moment in history and rather than talk about some battle or some important white dude, you could point to a work of art. From there you can dissect when it was made, why it was made, and most exciting for me: how it was made. Flash forward to now: I love talking to kids about pictures (I’ve totally stolen that art history lecture format for my school presentations) and I love breaking things down into the how. Of course this being the book world, it’s only taken me a few decades to put all this down onto the page!
BB: It seems to me that you’re balancing the inclusion of necessary information alongside a lot of funny stuff. For example, you kick off the book with a discussion of pigments, vehicles, and mediums, which could easily have been dull, but throw in a goodly amount of humor and cow pee along the way. When writing a book for kids, it feels like this balance is essential. How did you work out the right mix?
SW: I had this amazing middle school history teacher named Ms. Kim who started the year with a lecture about note-taking. Like, no history at all, just a whole class about how to take notes with no hierarchy of this way is better than that way. Some people do lists. Some people make charts. Some people make cartoons and dumb jokes in the margins. (Ahem.) As a very disorganized kiddo, it blew my mind and gave me a permission structure to absorb information the way my brain works. Working now, I think that this is ONLY way I could have ever begun to both understand something like that electromagnetic spectrum, and then convey said knowledge to young readers. My struggle is always how to balance the truly important facts with a firehose of incredibly entertaining yet dubiously helpful gags. I’m really, really flattered you think I’m onto the right mix!
BB: The book is certainly a history of color, but by necessity it’s also including a lot of art along the way. What impressed me so much was how it wasn’t all Euro-centric focused. You really open it up to a worldwide consideration in each and every color. Was that the game plan from the start? And what was your research process for finding all these colorful facts?
SW: In the same way groups like We Need Diverse Books are brilliantly making us look more critically at the kids’ book world, a whole universe of scholars and activists are doing the same thing in the art world. I’m deeply indebted to all that hard work. I’m continually stunned and disgusted by older art history texts that simply write off things like all First Peoples of Australia art, any art not made in Europe in the last two thousand years, or say, art not made by men. Still, to make sure I wasn’t falling into any old traps, one of the first things I did when making this book was to draw a world map. I jotted down every color story and pointed to where it came from. Embarrassingly in my first draft North America and Europe were VERY crowded. It became my goal after that to literally fill out the rest of my the map. That truly global map is now in the back of my book as a reminder that the color we see today is a product of all humanity’s efforts.
BB: Good man! So let’s get technical. In the past, children’s books could only be printed with limited color palettes. These days the technology has improved by leaps and bounds, but I still have to wonder . . . when you sent in these pages, were there any discussions with your art director on how one color or another will actually physically look in the printed final pages? Do you still look at the print outs before they go to press, or is everything reliable these days and you don’t have to anymore?
This is also Steven Weinberg
SW: Yes! I love this nitty gritty part of bookmaking and especially the art directors and production designers who live in it. One thing that surprised me in making this book was that there is a new printing technology! Traditionally anything printed is a mixture of four colors referred to as CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, and “k” for black). This is an approach that’s OLD, like it was more or less invented by a guy named Jacob Christophe Le Blon in the 1700s… I could go on and on about this… The new thing is that, in the past few years, printers have perfected what’s called “extended gamut printing”. This is a fancy word for adding a few more colors to CMYK. So now, by adding green, orange, and violet, the color possibilities are not endless, but the range is MUCH wider. Lucky for me, we’re printing What Is Color? this way!!
BB: Dude, if I ever start a band you can bet I’m going to name it Extended Gamut Printing. Guaranteed! Now you pack a LOT onto these pages but surely there were great swaths of stuff you weren’t able to include. So let us hear it! What would you have liked to also add to the mix if you’d had the time and space?
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SW: Oh man. Apparently, throughout the making of this book, I’d emerge from my studio and just start listing color facts to my wife, Casey. It got to a point where I sort of had to relearn how basic conversations work…! So again, there is so much to include, but I have to credit my al-knowing editor Kate Meltzer for finding places for nearly all of these facts: solid gold toilets, art being invented by Neanderthals vs Homo Sapiens, flesh eating fashion and all! The things I wanted to go into deeper were the truly despicable moments of history (the Spanish invasion of Mesoamerica, the Holocaust, European scholars denying that ancient sculpture was colorful as a way to reinforce the concept of white supremacy, etc) that I only had a paragraph or two to talk about. I labored over those pages really trying to do justice to that in so few words. If I can encourage kids to read more about the things you can’t always make a funny cartoon about, I’ll feel like I did those sections right.
And yes, believe it or not, this is ALSO Steven Weinberg
BB: I’m just gonna say it. This looks like it was an absolute blast to put together. Any plans for similar titles after this? Because we need more highly informative, hilarious informational books out there.
SW: It was! And what an excellent question because. . . I’m working on a book right now with my collaborator on the AstroNuts series (and, yes, father-in-law) Jon Scieszka right now. Is it highly informative? Yes! Is it hilarious and informational? Absolutely! We are humbly calling it How To Write and Draw ANYTHING. We’re taking the same format of What Is Color? and making a book about how to approach writing, drawing, and creating, well, anything. So it’s about scary things like laying your eyes on a blank page, even scarier things like sitting down to actually write or draw, and truly horrifying things like REVISIONS. Then balance all that with what Jon and I truly think is just as important to creativity: not writing or drawing. As in, the time spent staring into a bowl of noodles, watching cartoons, or going fishing—all of which are great ways to find ideas. So as soon as we finish with the noodles, cartoons, and fishing, Jon and I are VERY excited to share this book with you!
BB: I literally cannot wait!
Aww. What a nice guy. And now? Some interior spreads from the book!
I want to thank Steven Weinberg for taking the time to answer my questions today, and also to thank editor Kate Meltzer for helping to put this all together. WHAT IS COLOR? is on bookstore and library shelves everywhere August 20, 2024, but don’t worry. Good things come to those who wait.
Teaching Kids to Ask the Big Questions
Alumni5 MIN READ
Artist Steven Weinberg ’06 takes an interdisciplinary approach to his children’s books
Steven Weinberg '06 is an old-school illustrator with a book due out this summer, What Is Color? His children’s books have won awards and distinctions, including the Virginia Reader’s Choice Award, the Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection, the Today show’s Holiday Pick, and Parents magazine Best Children’s Book 2021.
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By Kayla Voigt '14Photography by Bridget Badore
February 28, 2024
The best stories start with a question. For Steven Weinberg ’06, that question is: What Is Color?
That’s the topic (and title) of his latest children’s book, a sprawling, eye-popping look at what makes every color of the rainbow. “I’ve always loved interdisciplinary stories and seeing ways politics, economics, history, and science translate onto a canvas,” said Weinberg.
“I think it will be a really fun book for kids because it’s full of all kinds of weird stuff,” he said. “There are these fascinating stories, like how people used to grind up mummies for brown paint, and then I’ve included a whole section on how the electromagnetic spectrum works in a way a kid can follow.”
In Steven Weinberg’s new book, What Is Color?, he takes readers “all over the world, introducing them to talented, brilliant, creative people from scientists to famous artists and everyone in between as we take the color wheel for a spin,” according to his publisher, Roaring Brook.
Weinberg, a writer, illustrator, and painter who lives in the Catskills of New York, took a liberal arts approach to creating the book, which clocks in at 144 pages, detailing the story behind each color. What Is Color? will be published by Roaring Brook, an imprint of Macmillan, this summer, and it is available for preorder now.
This kind of approach echoes his time at Colby, double majoring in government and art. “The natural interdisciplinary nature of my education at Colby informs everything I do. In the course of the book I pull from my experience taking studio art, art history, government, and physics classes. I mean, I couldn’t have written this book without taking [Professor of Art Bevin] Engman’s classes on color theory,” he said.
Artist Steven Weinberg in West Kill, N.Y., where he writes and illustrates interdisciplinary stories while exploring the ways politics, economics, history, and science translate onto a canvas.
It started at the Echo
Outside of the classroom, Weinberg served as editor-in-chief of the campus newspaper, the Echo. This was his first foray into real-life writing and illustrating, including a recurring comics section for the paper based on interviews with campus Security. “That was my first time on a deadline,” he laughed. “We were down in the basement of Bobs at all hours trying to finish each edition, and we’d sit there and chat with Security about various student hijinks. They were always great to talk to—and an endless source of good anecdotes.”
This kind of expansive, off-the-cuff storytelling served him well after graduating. Weinberg jumped headfirst into teaching English abroad in China and Mali before publishing his first book in 2011 with wife Casey Scieszka, an illustrated memoir of their travels together. Since then, he’s published several more children’s books on a wide range of topics, from dinosaurs to dishwashers.
Widely praised, his children’s books have won such awards and distinctions as the Virginia Reader’s Choice Award (You Must Be This Tall), YALSA Reader’s Choice (To TImbuktu), the Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection (AstroNuts: Mission One and The Middle Kid), the Today show’s Holiday Pick (Big Job Series), and Parents magazine Best Children’s Book 2021 (Washer & Dryer’s Big Job).
A page from What Is Color? The Global and Sometimes Gross Story of Pigments, Paint, and the Wondrous World of Art.
When not writing and making art, Weinberg and his wife operate the Spruceton Inn: A Catskills Bed and Bar and host an annual artist residency.
“There was never one straight path after Colby,” Weinberg said. “For me, and what I think is at the core of my liberal arts education, is that every time you have a question, you just need to chase that question. You’ve been given the tools to learn and create, and those are the projects that become something special.”
For Weinberg, it’s just as much about creating something new as it is cultivating community. “I talk to kids often in the process of creating books, and when I ask who likes to draw and who likes to write stories, every kid raises their hand. I love capturing that imagination,” he said. Despite graduating nearly two decades ago, he still keeps in touch with professors and alumni that help bring his children’s books to life. Said Weinberg, “I have an ‘it takes a village’ approach to creating. Colby’s been a pretty amazing village for that.”
WEINBERG, Steven. What Is Color?: The Global, Brain-Exploding Story of Pigments, Paint, and the Wondrous World of Art. illus. by Steven Weinberg. 160p. Roaring Brook. Aug. 2024. Tr $19.99. ISBN 9781250833419.
Gr 3 Up--Science, art, and history come together in this study of color. From the very start, readers are engaged in the exploration: "I am an artist (I bet you are too!)." Weinberg's dog Waldo serves as a guide throughout, on everything from light waves that exist in on the electromagnetic spectrum to the many ways pigments have been created over thousands of years. Humor distinguishes this book from others on the topic, with just the right amount of gross references to charm older elementary and middle school students. Bugs, cow pee, and sea snails are revealed to be the ingredients of certain pigments while substances like radium and arsenic, which produce a glorious shade of green, have been proven deadly. Each section focuses on a single color with extra fun facts included in text boxes and speech bubbles, enhanced by bright, hilarious illustrations. Tribute is paid to many famous artists and respect given for the LGBTQIA+ community for the evolution of the rainbow flag and symbolic pink triangle. Extensively researched and documented, this book spans the globe and many centuries yet conveys information simply and clearly, making it accessible across a wide range of grades. It's guaranteed to provide pleasure on the first lead and for dipping into again and again. VERDICT This imaginative combination of art and text is a must-purchase for school and public libraries.--Gloria Koster
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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Koster, Gloria. "WEINBERG, Steven. What Is Color?: The Global, Brain-Exploding Story of Pigments, Paint, and the Wondrous World of Art." School Library Journal, vol. 70, no. 7, July 2024, pp. 77+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A806586562/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=2c380200. Accessed 31 Oct. 2024.
What Is Color? The Global and Sometimes Gross Story of Pigments, Paint, and the Wondrous World of Art.
By Steven Weinberg. Illus. by the author.
Aug. 2024. 144p. Roaring Brook, $19.99 (9781250833419).
Gr. 4-8. 709.
Learning colors is a staple of childhood development, but what about learning about colors? This engaging overview introduces kids to many facets of how colors are defined, created, perceived, combined, brightened, heightened, and transformed by creative, natural, and scientific processes. Written by a bagel-loving artist and children's book illustrator, the text directly addresses readers while sharing the author's research, including some times stinky or disgusting discoveries. Another interesting topic covered is the history of how color has been used to designate, symbolize, and convey information over centuries. There's plenty of science (light waves, prisms, chemistry) and technology (how to make crayons, dye clothing, oxidize sculptures) along with basic art facts (color wheel, famous artists, artworks). Selected colors (red, blue, yellow, green, purple, orange, pink, black) get an entire chapter each detailing various pigment-producing ingredients (minerals, plants, crushed bugs, cow pee), historic applications and meanings, and interesting sidebars. Every page is filled with charming, humorous, and instructive illustrations that effectively enhance the text while showing Weinberg's whimsical creativity. The final chapter offers recipes, activities, maps, the periodic table, an extensive glossary, notes, and a bibliography. There are very few books on this subject, and this accessible, fun, and enlightening selection makes a perfect addition for brightening up school and public library STEAM collections.--Kathleen McBroom
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 American Library Association
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McBroom, Kathleen. "What Is Color? The Global and Sometimes Gross Story of Pigments, Paint, and the Wondrous World of Art." Booklist, vol. 120, no. 21, July 2024, p. 67. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A804615938/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=105df45c. Accessed 31 Oct. 2024.
Weinberg, Steven WHAT IS COLOR? Roaring Brook Press (Children's None) $19.99 8, 20 ISBN: 9781250833419
An illustrator's valentine to colors is a globe-spanning tribute to art and its many forms of expression.
Taking each hue on the color wheel in succession and wedging in chapters on pink, black, and white, Weinberg answers the titular question in a lively and thought-provoking if "superly duperly" simplified way: Color is art, science, a recipe, a feeling, language, time, change, and, well, "Everything!" Though he only passingly refers to artificial colors, the topics he addresses are fascinating and clearly explained, from the flora and fauna that humans have ground up to create natural pigments to the electromagnetic spectrum to the arsenic-laced green wallpaper that may have killed Napoleon. Rightly noting that different people and cultures actually see colors differently, the author presents examples of art from a broad range of places and eras. Readers can compare and contrast Jan van Eyck'sArnolfini Portrait or King Tut's mask with the art of First Nations Australian painter Emily Kame Kngwarreye and Haida wood and stone carver Charles Edenshaw. Conducting his tour in "person," Weinberg incorporates informally drawn images of himself and his dog throughout, tucking in other artist portraits as well, notably in a hilarious spread of Raphael'sSchool of Athens. The result is a winning, impressively comprehensive multidisciplinary take on the topic. Closing with a wealth of further information and resources, Weinberg includes lists of color-centric stories, plus recipes for making natural dyes (with adult help). People represented feature a wide range of skin tones.
A droll, effervescent, and wide-ranging work. (glossary, map, table of elements, sources, index)(Nonfiction. 10-13)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Weinberg, Steven: WHAT IS COLOR?" Kirkus Reviews, 1 Oct. 2024, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A810315185/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=a7ef9ed9. Accessed 31 Oct. 2024.