When I found out that my local Parents-As-Teachers program had a website featuring recommend books to read with your 0-36 month old I had to take a look. Every month of age has 2-4 recommend readings and Red, Blue, Yellow Shoe was suggested for 6 months old, which is an age when they recommend "vinyl or cloth books, good for mouthing."

The book is by Tana Hoban and introduces colors in a very simple format. Each page has a photo of an object, a circle/dot of a color, and the name of the color (written in the color it is). It has the colors red, blue, and yellow like the title suggests, but also purple, orange, green, brown, gray, black and white. But no pink!

This is a board book and about 6 x 6 inches. It is just 10 pages long, one page for each color. The photographs have the object against a very light gray background so they stand out very well and the objects chosen really are mostly the color. There is a black cat which really does look completely black. The yellow show does have white laces, but the rest is all yellow. The objects chosen are things that children will probably see in other books and possibly in their surroundings at home as well. I felt they were all appropriate.

I read this book with my 2 year old. He could name six of the ten objects. And although he knows the words for all the colors, he doesn't have them down pat. For a while whenever you asked what color something was it was blue. Then his response changed to black. Now he usually responds with green. Atleast he isn't saying numbers or letters, he knows those words are color words. But we definitely did use this book to work on colors.

I'd recommend this book for newborns to age 3 (or basically once your child has a good grasp of the colors as there isn't much to the book besides the colors). It is simple, has good object choices, and presents the basic colors. Plus the board book style makes it small hands and mouths friendly.

This has been an entry in sleeper54's Lean-n-mean Five Write-Off (under 666 words), mmcphee's Reading Write-Off, and msmorvay's Resurrecting the Oldies Write-Off (written in 1986).

Recommended: Yes