Children’s Art Books for Summer Reading 2025
Summer reading is well under way at Joplin Public Library. In the world of Youth Services, we have been reading lots of books, having a lot of fun, and making a lot of art. As you may recall, the theme of JPL’s 2025 summer reading program is “Color Our World.” In my last review, I shared Lian Cho’s picture book Oh, Olive! about a little girl who paints outside of the lines (literally and metaphorically).
We still have plenty of time left in summer break and it will likely only get hotter outside. For this month’s review, I want to share about a few art books that will entertain young readers and provide restless kids with some fun activities during the dog days of summer.
How To Be a Color Wizard: Forage and Experiment with Natural Color Making by Jason Logan combines art and nature activities for upper elementary and middle school-aged kids. The photographs are nature-based and aesthetically pleasing and the activities are fun and actually achievable for the target demographic. This book was published by mitKids Press, a publishing house affiliated with MIT that focuses on STEAM-based titles. Activities include making colors from natural materials such as berries and leaves, looking at colors in the world like a mantis shrimp, and making a paintbrush wand. Logan suffuses the book with magical language befitting a book a Hogwarts student might purchase from Flourish and Botts. I love that this book treats learning and experiment as serious work for kids, even when the actual experiment tasks the reader with pretending to be a shrimp.
The artwork and photos in the book are aesthetically pleasing, and the activities range from silly and easy for a preschooler to more challenging and appropriate for an upper elementary or middle school-aged reader (or even an adult reader). How to Be a Color Wizard is a beautiful, useful, and inspiring book to come back to over and over again.
Speaking of artistic inspiration, I first heard about the artist Alma Thomas through the picture book Ablaze With Color: A Story of Painter Alma Thomas. The 2022 biographical picture book was created by San Francisco Museum of Modern Art docent Jeanne Walker Harvey and illustrator Loveis Wise. Ablaze with Color tells the story of African American artist Alma Thomas beginning with her childhood in Georgia. Growing up in the early 1900s, Thomas experienced significant racial injustice. The author does not delve into the specifics of those injustices, though she does acknowledge how it impacted Alma’s family and how they responded. Her parents surrounded Alma and her sisters with art and culture, fostering a love of art in their daughters. At fifteen, their family moved to Washington D.C. so the girls could go to school. Alma taught art to local African American children, who were not permitted to attend segregated classes. Throughout her life, Alma taught and fostered art in her community. At age seventy, she began creating her own art. Loveis Wise does Thomas’ art justice through the use of patterns and bright colors, honoring, but not imitating, Thomas’ circular designs made up of colorful dashes and stripes. The writing is poetic without being overly sentimental, and it captures Alma Thomas’ aspirations and ability to see color and make art of her surroundings. The book begins with a quote from President Barack Obama that he made during Black History Month in 2015. Michelle Obama selected Alma Thomas’ painting Resurrection to hang in the White House, making Thomas the first African American woman with that honor. Ablaze with Color would be a great read aloud for early elementary-aged students and would provide many craft opportunities. Thomas’s use of patterns and colors lends itself well to creating with collages, painting with Legos or Blocks, printmaking, coloring, mosaics, and stamping. Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas is home to Alma Thomas’ Lunar Rendezvous–Circle of Flowers, which is well worth the drive. Happy reading and creating!
