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How Do You Make a Rainbow?

Book Synopsis

How do you make a rainbow? This joyful story, written by Caroline Crowe and illustrated by Cally Johnson-Isaacs, shows how to find colour and hope when days seem dim and grey: celebrating love, positivity and the precious relationship between a child and her grandad.

Stuck inside on a cloudy day, a little girl asks her grandad to help her paint a rainbow on the sky. But as Grandad tells her, rainbows aren’t painted on the sky, they grow out of kindness, hope, and helping other people.

How Do You Make a Rainbow? is a reassuring, heart-warming story of colours, kindness, community and nature, that shows that brighter times are always around the corner.

Our Review Panel says...

A joyful picturebook tapping into the power of finding positivity in the world around us.

When a little girls wants to know whether rainbows are painted, Grandad explains that instead they are made with hope and kindness to others. The story visits each of the the rainbow’s colours, listing associated things that bring hope, joy or kindness. Red is tulips or jam on toast, orange is kicking autumn leaves or dressing up as tigers, yellow is feeling sand on your toes or tasting zingy lemons, and so on. Many of the activities mentioned are those shared between friends or family members, and others focus on giving or being a blessing to others. Others still are just personal pleasures (like dying your hair a punk-rock shade of purple!).

I love the emphasis on finding joy in everyday things, and it’s hard to read the story without thinking of your own rainbow of joyful activities that bring colour into life. After months of lockdown, this story could be an excellent springboard into conversations and activities with children about being mindful of small pleasures, about finding positivity and about drawing on the ways in which love, friendship and community can bring joy.

Cheerful in concept and also in its bright illustrations and bouncy rhyme, this is a happy read that is perfectly timed for readers aged 3-7 as they approach the ease of lockdown and beyond.

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