My Cold Plum Lemon Pie Bluesy Mood I Tameka Fryer Brown
$15.99
4 in stock
Description
What color is your mood?
On a really good day, Jamie feels purple like the first bite of a juicy cold plum.
And with a crayon in his hand, Jamie eases into a green feeling–like a dragon dancing through a jungle made of green jello.
But when his brothers push him around and make fun of his drawings, Jamie feels like a dark gray storm brewing.
What will it take to put Jamie back in a bright-feeling mood?
Through Jamie, young readers will learn to describe how they’re feeling in a unique way.
My Cold Plum Lemon Pie Bluesy Mood is a 2014 Charlotte Zolotow Honor Book.
Lauren Willie –
We love reading this colorful rhyming book about feelings. The pictures are SO vibrant and really draw you into the story. My only complaint was when the author used the color black to describe a negative mood. I winced a little as we read that page, cause if WE keep using black as a negative so will the rest of the world. Everything else was fantastic!!
Kanika Mobley –
That’s a great point. It makes me think of a point the author made during our conversation about honoring all feelings because they all serve us. I wonder if she thought that when creating the colors and moods. It’s a wonderful conversation to have.
Tameka Fryer Brown –
Hi Lauren! Thanks for your thoughtful review.
In my first draft of this story, I made gray “sad”. When I decided to add “mad’ to the plot as a more intense version of sad, it made sense to make its color a more intense version of gray–i.e., black. It was a literal grayscale thing.
Kanika is also correct in that I don’t think of anger as a negative emotion. AT ALL. I don’t subscribe to the concept of “good” and “bad” feelings. All of our emotions serve us in many ways, including understanding who we are and what kind of treatment we should and should not accept. It is white supremacy, I believe, that has encouraged Black people to be afraid of being associated with anger–even by proxy. Not only do Black folks have a right to own and express our anger, we have a responsibility to do so.
Not that my assigning “mad” the color “black” was intentionally a political statement (it was merely a grayscale thing); I just have no issue whatsoever with associating black and anger.
Thank you, Lauren, for creating the opportunity to share my perspective on this. 🙂
(ETA: I wasn’t able to leave a comment without a rating, so… )