Children's Book Review: In a Blue Room (ages 4-8)

Jim Averbeck's and Tricia Tusa's In a Blue Room is a soothing book that makes an excellent choice for bedtime reading.

A young girl is settling down for the night, but she’s partial to the color blue. Her patient mother enters her room to announce that it’s bedtime, bringing her daughter a vase of white flowers. But since the flowers aren’t blue, the girl isn’t interested in them until her mother encourages her to smell them. Then the mother brings her daughter some tea in a brown cup; a soft, green quilt; and some yellow bells on black strings to hang in the window, all met with uncertainty because they aren’t blue.

In a Blue Room teaches children that it’s a good thing to experience new colors, sensations, and sounds. And although the girl’s room is yellow, not blue, there comes a moment that night when she does sleep in a room bathed in her favorite color. The last five pages show just how big and glorious the world is outside our bedroom window.