Green as a Bean

<p> What would you be if you were green? <br> Or red? <br> Or blue? <br> Or yellow? <br> Would you still be you? </p>

"Kuskin's 1960 text, Square as a House, gets a new title and, thanks to Iwai's (B Is for Bulldozer) velvety, fanciful pictures, a new lease on life. With a bespectacled, wide-eyed boy serving as a pretend tour guide, the book unfolds in a series of rhyming 'What if' musings. Instead of riffing on the usual sort of role-playing, Kuskin asks readers to think in more abstract, thought-provoking arenas — such as colors and textures, sounds and sizes — and consider the array of possibilities this opens up to them. 'If you could be green/ would you be a lawn/ or a lean green bean/ and the stalk it's on?/ ... / Tell me, lean green one,/ what would you be?' A few pages later she wonders, 'If you could be loud/ would you be the sound/ of thunder at night/ or the howl of a hound/ as he bays at the moon/ or the pound of the sea?/ Tell me, proud loud one,/ what would you be?' Iwai smoothes out the lines between reality and fantasy in her lushly colored vignettes, depicting a full moon smiling at the boy's pooch as he sets sail over a swirling sea. Kuskin's internal rhymes and highly visual examples set the stage for Iwai's solid, simple shapes. The recurring refrain ('Tell me...') subtly conveys to readers that while imagination is a powerful tool, they are fully in control of it. Ages 3-8. (Feb.) " Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

What would you be if you were green?

Or red?

Or blue?

Or yellow?

Would you still be you?

Karla Kuskin has written over fifty books for children, including the Philharmonic Gets Dressed, Under My Hood I Have a Hat, and Moon, Have You Met My Mother? She is also the winner of the NCTE Award for Excellence in Poetry, among other honors. Karla Kuskin lives in Brooklyn, New York, and Bainbridge Island, Washington. And if she were green, she would most definitely be a bean.