Open This Little Book and Find a Reading Rainbow

My friend Dan shares my love of great picture books, so when he finds one, he always makes a point of alerting me. This year for Christmas, he gave me Open This Little Book, a simple but clever book written by Jesse Klausmeier and illustrated by Suzy Lee.

The first thing I thought of when I read through this fun book was Cloud Atlas, as it has a similar recursive structure, albeit with much simpler contents. Indeed, there is very little text in the book except at its very heart. Nonetheless, there is enough there to give kids the gist of the idea and hopefully inspire not only further reading but further writing as well.

While Klausmeier is a first-time author, Korean artist Lee has received many accolades for her work, and it is the visual component of this book that is so striking. It begins after the title page, when we see a purple paperback book resting comfortably inside the larger hardcover. This interior book is slightly smaller, leaving a mostly-white border around it where the book returns to full-size at the end. Its cover is less complex but still incorporates most of the same elements as the cover proper.

The title is an instruction. Open the book, and you’ll find another, still smaller, book inside, this one entitled Little Red Book. Inside that is Little Green Book, which contains Little Orange Book, which houses Little Yellow Book, which conceals Little Blue Book and, finally, Little Rainbow Book. Each book introduces another character, and the two illustrations inside it show that character holding the next book in line. For instance, Rabbit, who first appears in the orange book, holds the yellow book in his paw.

The use of color in the book is wonderful. Each book has a solid color outline on the inside to which the next book reaches, so when you get to the middle you have very defined white, purple, red, green, orange, yellow and blue boxes. While the order is not quite that of the rainbow spectrum, the basic colors are there, and it’s very pleasing to the eye.

Additionally, the color subtly enforces the idea that every book we read expands our knowledge. The first illustration inside the purple book is black and white except for the red book. In the next illustration, however, red is used extensively, while the only other color is green, which is only used to show the book Ladybug is reading. This continues, with each book incorporating more colors.

When they double back on themselves, each of them closing his or her book in turn, the illustrations on the right-hand side of the books are drenched with color. Rabbit now has a yellow umbrella; Ladybug is surrounded by leafy greenery. Their worlds are brighter because of what they have gained by reading.

That message is more overtly stated at the very end of the book as well, since it explicitly instructs children to open another book after they have closed the last of the mini-books. The final illustration is a joyous celebration of the wonders of reading, with all of the book’s characters and many others happily sprawled around a beautiful bookcase fashioned out of a pair of entwined trees. That design emphasizes the sense of connection that runs through the book (or, rather, series of books). Stories are something we share with each other.

This book is a delight to peruse, and I can easily picture some children wanting to try creating a book like this themselves. I’m certain my artistic brother would have enjoyed such a task had he encountered such a book as a kid. Children might also have fun identifying all of the animals featured in the final picture and imagining what each of them could be reading.

As someone who grew up with both Star Trek: The Next Generation and Reading Rainbow, I was intrigued by Klausmeier’s decision to dedicate the book in part to LeVar Burton. She offers no explanation, but I suspect the latter show has something to do with it. After all, she, too, is telling reader to take a look in a book, and in this case, the contents are colorful indeed.