This is our second time to read through this poetry book, and we enjoy it more each time. Each poem is about a specific color, ("What is White?) then describes the color in the most beautiful way, including imagery, feelings, smells. It's a wonderful little book and we look forward to poetry time every day in our homeschool!

Title: Hailstones and Hailbut Bones
Author: Mary O'Neill
Illustrator: John Wallner
Originally Published: 1961
Interest Level: 4-6, Grades 1 and Up

Summary: Award-winner Wallner has illustrated this full-color edition of O'Neill's classic poetry book. With a compelling sense of rhythm and with images that are clear and fresh, O'Neill explores the spectrum in 12 poems and 12 different colors. Wallner has created montages of each poem's images and colored them with various hues of the featured color. The results do complement the moods of the poems, but one must wonder why, in a set of poems celebrating color, all but three of the people shown are white. Poems such as "What is Brown?"--"Brown is as comfortable/ As love"--could create responses like Arnold Adoff's Black is Brown is Tan.

My Take: Using something as simple as one color, my students could find the value in such a task. Just one color can evoke so many images and allow young writers an outlet. The watercolor illustrations match the words so well. There are hints of rhyme throughout each poem and the book. Every other line rhymes, a technique that can be taught.

I picked up this book for Leonard Weisgard's illustrations, black and white and whatever color of the poem's subject, from purple to yellow. O'Neill sometimes reaches for a rhyme but at her best she is profound.

Simple and vivid poetry about colour.

I read this every Friday, one poem at a time, for our color study. This version has removed the offensive "red as an Indian," so it does not require any editing. Recommended - be sure to get this version.

Loved this as a child, so much fun, so colorful and beautiful.

It's difficult to write rhyming poetry that isn't contrived or trite. Mary O'Neill succeeds in writing simple yet vivid poetry with rhymes that don't get in the way of the images she's trying to create.

Yellow blinks
On summer nights
In the off-and-on of
Firefly lights.
Yellow's a topaz
A candle flame.
Felicity's a
Yellow name.
Yellow's mimosa
And I guess,
Yellow's the color of
Happiness.

Unfortunately, some of the material is dated.

Beautiful in both poetry and illustrations!

On page 28, when talking about the color blue, I thought it was interesting that blue could be either cold or hot (like welding torch flame). I liked some of the the other things she said about black, gray, and red.

When I was little, I used to say that red was my favorite color, but I also like blue with it. And now I can’t really decide! There’s not a color I don’t like.

"Like acrobats on a high trapeze
The Colors pose and bend their knees
Twist and turn and leap and blend
Into shapes and feelings without end..."

So begins Mary O'Neill's lovely poetry book that goes far beyond most color concept books. The illustrate each color with far more than objects, but employs unusual images, emotions, and connections to all five senses as well as the more concrete, predictable choices, e.g., "Time is purple/Just before night," "Yellow's mother's name/is gold....""Black is a feeling/Hard to explain/Like suffering but/Without the pain."

Leonard Weisgard's soft chalk and pen-and-ink illustrations are the perfect accompaniment to O'Neill's carefully chosen words. There is a newer edition of the book featuring new artwork by John Wallner, but do yourself a favor and try to find a good used edition of the original instead. You will not regret it.

This was one of my daughter's favorite books as a child, and we are now using it to help our young grandson learn his colors.

We all know what colors look like...but what do they smell like? What do they sound like? What do they feel like? This book of poetry hits the nail on the head in describing the meaning of colors. Perfect for people of all ages.

A nice and simple poetry book of colours.

Fan. Tastic.