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Rainbow: Ready-to-Read Level 1
Newbery Honor recipient and New York Times bestselling author Marion Dane Bauer teaches beginning readers about rainbows in this bright Level 1 Ready-to-Read.
What is that colorful arc in the sky? It is a rainbow. Rainbows are always pretty to look at, but where do they come from? The answer is at your fingertips. Just open this book and read about the wonders of rainbows…
What is that colorful arc in the sky? It is a rainbow. Rainbows are always pretty to look at, but where do they come from? The answer is at your fingertips. Just open this book and read about the wonders of rainbows…
32 pages, Hardcover
First published May 24, 2016
2 people are currently reading
31 people want to read
About the author
Marion Dane Bauer
172 books186 followersMarion Dane Bauer is the author of more than one hundred books for young people, ranging from novelty and picture books through early readers, both fiction and nonfiction, books on writing, and middle-grade and young-adult novels. She has won numerous awards, including several Minnesota Book Awards, a Jane Addams Peace Association Award for RAIN OF FIRE, an American Library Association Newbery Honor Award for ON MY HONOR, a number of state children's choice awards and the Kerlan Award from the University of Minnesota for the body of her work.
She is also the editor of and a contributor to the ground-breaking collection of gay and lesbian short stories, Am I Blue? Coming Out from the Silence.
Marion was one of the founding faculty and the first Faculty Chair for the Master of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults program at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her writing guide, the American Library Association Notable WHAT'S YOUR STORY? A YOUNG PERSON'S GUIDE TO WRITING FICTION, is used by writers of all ages. Her books have been translated into more than a dozen different languages.
She has six grandchildren and lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, with her partner and a cavalier King Charles spaniel, Dawn.
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INTERVIEW WITH MARION DANE BAUER
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Q. What brought you to a career as a writer?
A. I seem to have been born with my head full of stories. For almost as far back as I can remember, I used most of my unoccupied moments--even in school when I was supposed to be doing other "more important" things--to make up stories in my head. I sometimes got a notation on my report card that said, "Marion dreams." It was not a compliment. But while the stories I wove occupied my mind in a very satisfying way, they were so complex that I never thought of trying to write them down. I wouldn't have known where to begin. So though I did all kinds of writing through my teen and early adult years--letters, journals, essays, poetry--I didn't begin to gather the craft I needed to write stories until I was in my early thirties. That was also when my last excuse for not taking the time to sit down to do the writing I'd so long wanted to do started first grade.
Q. And why write for young people?
A. Because I get my creative energy in examining young lives, young issues. Most people, when they enter adulthood, leave childhood behind, by which I mean that they forget most of what they know about themselves as children. Of course, the ghosts of childhood still inhabit them, but they deal with them in other forms--problems with parental authority turn into problems with bosses, for instance--and don't keep reaching back to the original source to try to fix it, to make everything come out differently than it did the first time. Most children's writers, I suspect, are fixers. We return, again and again, usually under the cover of made-up characters, to work things through. I don't know that our childhoods are necessarily more painful than most. Every childhood has pain it, because life has pain in it at every stage. The difference is that we are compelled to keep returning to the source.
Q. You write for a wide range of ages. Do you write from a different place in writing for preschoolers than for young adolescents?
A. In a picture book or board book, I'm always writing from the womb of the family, a place that--while it might be intruded upon by fears, for instance--is still, ultimately, safe and nurturing. That's what my own early childhood was like, so it's easy for me to return to those feelings and to recreate them.
When I write for older readers, I'm writing from a very different experience. My early adolescence, especially, was a time of deep alienation, mostly from my peers but in some ways from my family as well. And so I write my older stories out of that pain, that longing for connection. A story has to have a problem at its core. No struggle
She is also the editor of and a contributor to the ground-breaking collection of gay and lesbian short stories, Am I Blue? Coming Out from the Silence.
Marion was one of the founding faculty and the first Faculty Chair for the Master of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults program at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her writing guide, the American Library Association Notable WHAT'S YOUR STORY? A YOUNG PERSON'S GUIDE TO WRITING FICTION, is used by writers of all ages. Her books have been translated into more than a dozen different languages.
She has six grandchildren and lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, with her partner and a cavalier King Charles spaniel, Dawn.
-------------------------------------
INTERVIEW WITH MARION DANE BAUER
-------------------------------------
Q. What brought you to a career as a writer?
A. I seem to have been born with my head full of stories. For almost as far back as I can remember, I used most of my unoccupied moments--even in school when I was supposed to be doing other "more important" things--to make up stories in my head. I sometimes got a notation on my report card that said, "Marion dreams." It was not a compliment. But while the stories I wove occupied my mind in a very satisfying way, they were so complex that I never thought of trying to write them down. I wouldn't have known where to begin. So though I did all kinds of writing through my teen and early adult years--letters, journals, essays, poetry--I didn't begin to gather the craft I needed to write stories until I was in my early thirties. That was also when my last excuse for not taking the time to sit down to do the writing I'd so long wanted to do started first grade.
Q. And why write for young people?
A. Because I get my creative energy in examining young lives, young issues. Most people, when they enter adulthood, leave childhood behind, by which I mean that they forget most of what they know about themselves as children. Of course, the ghosts of childhood still inhabit them, but they deal with them in other forms--problems with parental authority turn into problems with bosses, for instance--and don't keep reaching back to the original source to try to fix it, to make everything come out differently than it did the first time. Most children's writers, I suspect, are fixers. We return, again and again, usually under the cover of made-up characters, to work things through. I don't know that our childhoods are necessarily more painful than most. Every childhood has pain it, because life has pain in it at every stage. The difference is that we are compelled to keep returning to the source.
Q. You write for a wide range of ages. Do you write from a different place in writing for preschoolers than for young adolescents?
A. In a picture book or board book, I'm always writing from the womb of the family, a place that--while it might be intruded upon by fears, for instance--is still, ultimately, safe and nurturing. That's what my own early childhood was like, so it's easy for me to return to those feelings and to recreate them.
When I write for older readers, I'm writing from a very different experience. My early adolescence, especially, was a time of deep alienation, mostly from my peers but in some ways from my family as well. And so I write my older stories out of that pain, that longing for connection. A story has to have a problem at its core. No struggle
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
October 18, 2022
Quite good for the right audience, a quick and engaging non-fiction summary of the science of rainbows for young children. I enjoyed it, even though I didn't learn anything. No bibliography and only a bit more detail in the back matter (which is not surprising given the format and audience).
Read for the Colors theme in the Children's Books group, October 2022.
Read for the Colors theme in the Children's Books group, October 2022.
May 27, 2025
I liked this one okay. I felt like it started to drag out too long. For a story that should've been simple to explain the rainbow, it takes a round about, longer way to say everything. This caused the preschoolers to lose interest. It also just isn't the strongest book to read out loud for story time, which is understandable since it's an Early Reader.
October 20, 2016
A scientific explanation of rainbows for young readers.
This is a super quick and easy read. I think I read it twice in less than 5 min. But it does a good job of breaking down the science of how rainbows happen, and I like that it explains how the shape and position depends on your location and if you're high enough it is actually a rainbow. The myth about gold at the end is addressed in this section since rainbows don't really end. A great, quick scientific look at rainbows written in fairly easy language for beginning readers.
This is a super quick and easy read. I think I read it twice in less than 5 min. But it does a good job of breaking down the science of how rainbows happen, and I like that it explains how the shape and position depends on your location and if you're high enough it is actually a rainbow. The myth about gold at the end is addressed in this section since rainbows don't really end. A great, quick scientific look at rainbows written in fairly easy language for beginning readers.
August 30, 2017
Cute book -1st grade level. Some fun facts about rainbows.
March 25, 2018
Good book about Rainbows for Preschoolers
January 16, 2023
What is that in the sky? It is a rainbow. Rainbows are very pretty, but where do they come from? The answer is at your fingertips. Just open this book and read about the wonders of rainbows...
March 12, 2017
3/11/17 Read with Naomi & Julia.
August 4, 2016
This was a lovely Easy Level 1 reader. Just enough science to answer the questions of inquiring littles, but still instilled with all the wonder and magic rainbows inspire. The illustrations are really cute, and I loved that the kids had a cat out exploring with them in the rain.
Bonus, I learned something! Rainbows can appear to be "upside down" are are then called "Sun Smiles." I must see this.
Bonus, I learned something! Rainbows can appear to be "upside down" are are then called "Sun Smiles." I must see this.
August 12, 2020
AR 2.4
April 9, 2017
I am using this book as an opener in my second grade class for a lesson on rainbows. This book is a great book that describes what a rainbow is and the colors. The setting is outside after a rain storm.
April 27, 2017
Although this is an easy reader, it was suitable for our preschool rainbow story time. Recommend if you are looking for the science behind the rainbow.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews