The Color Monster: A Story About Emotions
The monster's mixed-up colors are separated into jars for happiness, sadness, anger, fear and calm. The visual sorting gives a child labels and contrasts, especially when verbal explanation alone feels too abstract.
The Color Monster: A Story About Emotions by Anna Llenas is estimated to take about 5 minutes to read aloud (320 words, 2 sentences a spread). Best for ages 3-5.
Check the book on AmazonAffiliate link
- Estimated read-aloud time
- about 5 minutesEstimated read-aloud time
- Words
- 320Approximate
- Sentences per spread
- 2Text density
- Re-read tolerance
- 4/5repeat friendly
- Vocabulary level
- 2/5everyday words
- Best for
- Ages 3-5Age range
Our review
The tangled multicolor monster makes confusion visible before each feeling receives a color, image and jar. That organization gives an adult and child shared shorthand for naming a current state, while the final pink feeling tests whether the reader can infer a label from the established pattern.
In My Heart: A Book of Feelings treats emotions as changing sizes, textures and sensations inside one person. The Color Monster is more schematic and easier to sort, but its one-color-per-feeling system is a prompt rather than a rule about emotional life. Children should be free to reject or change the book's associations.
Before you buy it
Feelings do not always separate cleanly or belong to one universal color, and the final new feeling is left for inference. In My Heart describes emotions through changing bodily metaphors rather than a sorting system.
Themes
- emotions
- colours
- naming feelings
- monsters
Books like The Color Monster: A Story About Emotions
More books with similar themes, formats, lengths and ways to join in.
In My Heart: A Book of Feelingsabout 6 minutes estimated · book review
Grumpy Monkeyabout 6 minutes estimated · book review
The Goodbye Bookabout 3.5 minutes estimated · book review
The Rabbit Listenedabout 4.5 minutes estimated · book review
When Sophie Gets Angry - Really, Really Angry...about 3.5 minutes estimated · book review
Lists The Color Monster: A Story About Emotions is on
20 booksBooks for 3 Year OldsChoose between joining a repeated line, following an accumulating problem and explaining what a character knows.- 11 booksPreschool Books About FeelingsChoose a feelings book by what it actually does: names an emotion, follows an upsetting incident, challenges pressure to feel differently or shows someone listening.
14 booksPreschool Books for Group StorytimeFor preschool group storytime, the useful question is whether everyone can follow and take part from where they are sitting.