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Blue: A History of the Color as Deep as the Sea and as Wide as the Sky
Discover a world of creativity and tradition in this fascinating picture book that explores the history and cultural significance of the color blue. From a critically acclaimed author and an award-winning illustrator comes a vivid, gorgeous book for readers of all ages.
For centuries, blue powders and dyes were some of the most sought-after materials in the world. Ancient Afghan painters ground mass quantities of sapphire rocks to use for their paints, while snails were harvested in Eurasia for the tiny amounts of blue that their bodies would release.
And then there was indigo, which was so valuable that American plantations grew it as a cash crop on the backs of African slaves. It wasn't until 1905, when Adolf von Baeyer created a chemical blue dye, that blue could be used for anything and everything--most notably that uniform of workers everywhere, blue jeans.
With stunning illustrations by Caldecott Honor Artist Daniel Minter, this vibrant and fascinating picture book follows one color's journey through time and across the world, as it becomes the blue we know today.
For centuries, blue powders and dyes were some of the most sought-after materials in the world. Ancient Afghan painters ground mass quantities of sapphire rocks to use for their paints, while snails were harvested in Eurasia for the tiny amounts of blue that their bodies would release.
And then there was indigo, which was so valuable that American plantations grew it as a cash crop on the backs of African slaves. It wasn't until 1905, when Adolf von Baeyer created a chemical blue dye, that blue could be used for anything and everything--most notably that uniform of workers everywhere, blue jeans.
With stunning illustrations by Caldecott Honor Artist Daniel Minter, this vibrant and fascinating picture book follows one color's journey through time and across the world, as it becomes the blue we know today.
40 pages, Hardcover
First published February 15, 2022
16 people are currently reading
1141 people want to read
About the author
Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond
7 books75 followersNana Ekua Brew-Hammond's first book Powder Necklace (Washington Square Press 2010) is a YA tome loosely inspired by her experience attending a girls’ boarding school in the Central Region of Ghana, West Africa. Publishers Weekly called the book “a winning debut” while Library Journal recommended it "for readers who enjoyed Edwidge Danticat's Breath, Eyes, Memory or Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Purple Hibiscus".
In 2014, she was included among some of the most promising African authors under 39 in the Hay Festival-Rainbow Book Club Project Africa39: New Writing from Africa South of the Sahara (Bloomsbury). The Africa39 anthology was published in celebration of UNESCO's designation of Port Harcourt, Nigeria as 2014 World Book Capital. Most recently, she was shortlisted for the 2014 Miles Morland Writing Scholarship.
Also a style & culture writer, Brew-Hammond has been featured on MSNBC, NY1, SaharaTV, and ARISE TV, and been published in EBONY Magazine, Ethiopian Airlines' Selamata Magazine, EBONY.com, The Village Voice, on NBC's thegrio.com, and MadameNoire.com, among other outlets.
For more information, visit her website (nanabrewhammond.com), follow her blog (PeopleWhoWrite.wordpress.com). and connect with her on Facebook (facebook.com/PowderNecklace) and Twitter (Twitter.com/nanaekua).
In 2014, she was included among some of the most promising African authors under 39 in the Hay Festival-Rainbow Book Club Project Africa39: New Writing from Africa South of the Sahara (Bloomsbury). The Africa39 anthology was published in celebration of UNESCO's designation of Port Harcourt, Nigeria as 2014 World Book Capital. Most recently, she was shortlisted for the 2014 Miles Morland Writing Scholarship.
Also a style & culture writer, Brew-Hammond has been featured on MSNBC, NY1, SaharaTV, and ARISE TV, and been published in EBONY Magazine, Ethiopian Airlines' Selamata Magazine, EBONY.com, The Village Voice, on NBC's thegrio.com, and MadameNoire.com, among other outlets.
For more information, visit her website (nanabrewhammond.com), follow her blog (PeopleWhoWrite.wordpress.com). and connect with her on Facebook (facebook.com/PowderNecklace) and Twitter (Twitter.com/nanaekua).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 315 reviews
July 23, 2023
Feeling blue, royalty, blue ribbon, singing the blues. A picture book for older kids about the history and cultural significance of the color blue, not ignoring the greed and injustice associated with it. Slaves in this country helped to raise indigo crops.
Need I say that the book is colorful?
Need I say that the book is colorful?
July 25, 2023
A history of human production of blue dyes with an emphasis on the non-European, pre-Industrial Revolution sources of lapis lazuli and indigo. Good information on indigo production and dye techniques of West Africa and the subsequent enslavement of indigo producers in the New World.
May 18, 2022
What. A. Beautiful. Book! I didn’t know I needed a history of a color, but I am so glad it exists! And the back matter is just an awesome addition.
March 12, 2022
Featured in a grandma reads session.
If you love blue, you'll love the pages in this book. . . .while they tell the history of humans and blue, the colors melt off the page and into your room, wherever you are reading and all things blue pop out at you. The kiddos enjoyed it, as there are a number of blue fanatics! All shades of blue considered, and origins from the beginning of time, through the techno blues we have thanks to chemicals and technology.
How many stars I asked. . . .FIVE! they shouted. It was a hit.
If you love blue, you'll love the pages in this book. . . .while they tell the history of humans and blue, the colors melt off the page and into your room, wherever you are reading and all things blue pop out at you. The kiddos enjoyed it, as there are a number of blue fanatics! All shades of blue considered, and origins from the beginning of time, through the techno blues we have thanks to chemicals and technology.
How many stars I asked. . . .FIVE! they shouted. It was a hit.
March 5, 2023
A fascinating glimpse at the history of blue dyes, reaching back thousands of years, and the cultural significance of the color blue around the world. It makes me want to learn more.
(Another project! I'm trying to read all the picture books and graphic novels on the kids section of NPR's Books We Love 2022.)
(Another project! I'm trying to read all the picture books and graphic novels on the kids section of NPR's Books We Love 2022.)
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August 19, 2022Misinformation in this book as of August 2022:
- "And some doctors still use it [indigo] as a natural medicine."
There is zero clinical evidence/science to support that indigo is a medicine. "Some" is doing a lot of work here, and "doctor" is dangerously misleading, because your MD would not do this.
- "We feel excited when something happens 'out of the blue,'
perhaps because the color was once so rare--
a discovery that seemed to appear out of thin air."
Bizarre to guess here and use "perhaps," when we can at least track the usage of "out of the blue" in historic print, along with the phrase, "a bolt from the blue."
There's also a belief in the professional archery community that "out of the blue" is historically an archery-related phrase that would predate said print usages, and that would be worth investigating.
There are selected citations in the back, but none that indicate any relation to source material for these particular lines.
That's just what I happened to notice. Would be curious to know if anyone catches anything else.
- "And some doctors still use it [indigo] as a natural medicine."
There is zero clinical evidence/science to support that indigo is a medicine. "Some" is doing a lot of work here, and "doctor" is dangerously misleading, because your MD would not do this.
- "We feel excited when something happens 'out of the blue,'
perhaps because the color was once so rare--
a discovery that seemed to appear out of thin air."
Bizarre to guess here and use "perhaps," when we can at least track the usage of "out of the blue" in historic print, along with the phrase, "a bolt from the blue."
There's also a belief in the professional archery community that "out of the blue" is historically an archery-related phrase that would predate said print usages, and that would be worth investigating.
There are selected citations in the back, but none that indicate any relation to source material for these particular lines.
That's just what I happened to notice. Would be curious to know if anyone catches anything else.
March 21, 2022
This is a stunningly thought provoking picture book that tells the cultural history of the color blue including how it was made, used, and perceived. The exquisite illustrations and the lyrical text work well to add power and poignancy to the way the beautiful color has been used to convey authority and rank through the years. An outstanding picture book in every way!
September 19, 2022
Facinating
July 2, 2023
This small but mighty book taught me things I didn’t know about Blue. Actually, had some indigo facts confirmed today!! 💙💙💙
July 12, 2022
Gorgeous and informative!
January 1, 2023
This was actually. I felt like I learned a lot from reading this. It might be a color but the author goes more in depth and the significance of it.
February 6, 2023
Illustrations include details that add more to the story; people first history recognizing those enslaved
March 11, 2022
Yeah. I’m just going to jump right into it.
Folks, let’s talk about decentering whiteness (bet you didn't see that one coming). What does that look like? Okay, let’s just take a random example. Um… got it. So let’s say I had a nonfiction picture book in my hands and it was all about the human history of a single color. Now if this book were to come out in America, no one would bat an eye if most of the characters seen on the pages inside were white. I mean, that’s how most of the nonfiction picture books you find on your library and bookstore shelves look. Generally speaking, if a book is about Black history or advocacy or biography, then they have Black characters as the predominant race. But if you get away from that and talk about nature or science or math or art, then white becomes the default. And if you’re a white person like me, you don’t even notice. You don’t so much as bat an eye. Oh sure, there will be the occasional nod to other races, but whiteness is centered. Now pick up a copy of Blue by Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond, illustrated by Daniel Minter. Here we have a book about the science and complicated history behind this marvelous color. The writing is excellent, the art jaw-dropping, but it is the fact that the text and the art shift the focus from the typically all-white worlds of picture book nonfiction into something different, that really catches the eye and makes you start to think. Because maybe, just maybe, there’s a future out there where white doesn’t automatically become the default all the time. Blue is giving us a glimpse of just that and it's teaching some other valuable lessons along the way.
When you find blue in nature, only rarely can you touch it. You can’t touch the sky, after all, and if you cup the sea in your hands, the water there isn’t blue. Yet throughout our history we’ve tried to capture the color for our own. Whether it was the Egyptians wearing lapis lazuli, dyers crushing snails to get a single drop or two, or the blue threads of a Jewish tekhelet, blue carries significance in its hue. So when indigo from India and West Africa started to be traded, it was linked to slavery. The cash crop led to misery in India, Bangladesh, and the United States. A chemical blue, discovered in 1905, helped make it universal. Yet when you think of someone being blue, or the music of the blues, is it any wonder that it’s had such a complex history? With deft wordplay and meticulous art “Blue” redefines the color we take all too often for granted.
What Brew-Hammond has to do in this book is so complicated. Essentially, her job here is to first do the standard move of providing history and context. She covers Egypt and the Phoenicians, Mexico and Liberia. Then, roughly halfway through the book, indigo makes its appearance and everything shifts. With indigo comes cheaper dyes. With cheaper dyes comes increased demand. And since we’re talking about the past, slavery appears and the story has to encompass that aspect. Here in America, slavery is so frequently linked to cotton that our kids could be forgiven for being surprised that another crop would cause the same levels of misery. A synthetic blue is eventually developed, but the book doesn’t just forget about the history that has dogged the color. There’s this elegant shift to “the blues”, and Minter cleverly presents a blues singer with indigo flowers woven into her hair and embroidered on her dress. And you could end it all there, but then blue becomes associated with good things again, blue ribbons and surprises that come “out of the blue”. It's a marvelous melding, in both the art and the words, of the good and the bad together.
It was with great satisfaction that I watched as Daniel Minter won a 2020 Caldecott Honor for Going Down Home With Daddy. Though I’d read previous books of his (like So Tall Within) it was that book that stood out for me. But when I look at his work in Blue, the book it resembles most closely is definitely Minter’s The Women Who Caught the Babies, by Eloise Greenfield, which is another nonfiction picture book about midwives. Maybe it's because of the prevalence of blue in both books, but I think it also has a lot to do with the ways in which Minter tackles nonfiction subject matter. This is a man unafraid to make facts pretty. His art always presents more than you’d find in the text. Some (many) nonfiction illustrators take the text at face value. If a page were about the blue found in the belly of a shellfish, they would draw the shellfish. When Minter does it, however, he breaks the page down into a range of different parts. In the center he places a Phoenician statue of a dog with a snail in its mouth. To the sides are white outlines of people and wonderful reeds and birds and leaves. There’s only one spot of blue on the whole page, but your eye goes right to it. Minter stands out because when he accessorizes a scene, what he adds only embellishes. It never detracts or distracts. It’s a fine line that he walks like a friggin’ tightrope walker.
A couple years ago I remember listening to an episode of the podcast Radiolab named Why Isn’t the Sky Blue? It took a deep dive into the color, noting that in ancient texts like The Odyssey or The Illiad there are no mentions of the color blue. In the course of the show you learn that across all cultures, words for colors appear in stages. And blue? Blue always comes last. Maybe it has to do with the sheer difficulty of capturing it and stabilizing it. And while on the outset they haven’t much in common, there’s another 2022 picture book release that I wouldn’t mind pairing alongside Blue. Lindsay Ward’s Pink Is Not a Color doesn’t take as deep a dive into its shade as Blue does, but both books revel in upsetting expectations and upending the myths surrounding their colors. Tonally they couldn’t be more different, but it’s that very difference that might make them a good pairing together. For the enterprising art teacher it’s something to consider.
To understand why I think that this book has a chance to make a difference in this world, you need only look at how the book ends. The final line in the book sticks the landing and sticks it hard. It reads, “Maybe because blue has such a complicated history of pain, wealth, invention, and recovery, it’s become a symbol of possibility, as vast and deep as the bluest sea, and as wide open and high as the bluest sky.” So the book is acknowledging this complicated past, but ending on a note of hope for kids. Right now, we’re living in an age where certain people in this country are attempting to remove any books that touch on our country’s complicated past. Books like this one are the antidote to such simplistic thinking, in more ways than one. I can only hope and pray it gets into the hands of the kids out there that need its message. Which is to say, all of them.
Folks, let’s talk about decentering whiteness (bet you didn't see that one coming). What does that look like? Okay, let’s just take a random example. Um… got it. So let’s say I had a nonfiction picture book in my hands and it was all about the human history of a single color. Now if this book were to come out in America, no one would bat an eye if most of the characters seen on the pages inside were white. I mean, that’s how most of the nonfiction picture books you find on your library and bookstore shelves look. Generally speaking, if a book is about Black history or advocacy or biography, then they have Black characters as the predominant race. But if you get away from that and talk about nature or science or math or art, then white becomes the default. And if you’re a white person like me, you don’t even notice. You don’t so much as bat an eye. Oh sure, there will be the occasional nod to other races, but whiteness is centered. Now pick up a copy of Blue by Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond, illustrated by Daniel Minter. Here we have a book about the science and complicated history behind this marvelous color. The writing is excellent, the art jaw-dropping, but it is the fact that the text and the art shift the focus from the typically all-white worlds of picture book nonfiction into something different, that really catches the eye and makes you start to think. Because maybe, just maybe, there’s a future out there where white doesn’t automatically become the default all the time. Blue is giving us a glimpse of just that and it's teaching some other valuable lessons along the way.
When you find blue in nature, only rarely can you touch it. You can’t touch the sky, after all, and if you cup the sea in your hands, the water there isn’t blue. Yet throughout our history we’ve tried to capture the color for our own. Whether it was the Egyptians wearing lapis lazuli, dyers crushing snails to get a single drop or two, or the blue threads of a Jewish tekhelet, blue carries significance in its hue. So when indigo from India and West Africa started to be traded, it was linked to slavery. The cash crop led to misery in India, Bangladesh, and the United States. A chemical blue, discovered in 1905, helped make it universal. Yet when you think of someone being blue, or the music of the blues, is it any wonder that it’s had such a complex history? With deft wordplay and meticulous art “Blue” redefines the color we take all too often for granted.
What Brew-Hammond has to do in this book is so complicated. Essentially, her job here is to first do the standard move of providing history and context. She covers Egypt and the Phoenicians, Mexico and Liberia. Then, roughly halfway through the book, indigo makes its appearance and everything shifts. With indigo comes cheaper dyes. With cheaper dyes comes increased demand. And since we’re talking about the past, slavery appears and the story has to encompass that aspect. Here in America, slavery is so frequently linked to cotton that our kids could be forgiven for being surprised that another crop would cause the same levels of misery. A synthetic blue is eventually developed, but the book doesn’t just forget about the history that has dogged the color. There’s this elegant shift to “the blues”, and Minter cleverly presents a blues singer with indigo flowers woven into her hair and embroidered on her dress. And you could end it all there, but then blue becomes associated with good things again, blue ribbons and surprises that come “out of the blue”. It's a marvelous melding, in both the art and the words, of the good and the bad together.
It was with great satisfaction that I watched as Daniel Minter won a 2020 Caldecott Honor for Going Down Home With Daddy. Though I’d read previous books of his (like So Tall Within) it was that book that stood out for me. But when I look at his work in Blue, the book it resembles most closely is definitely Minter’s The Women Who Caught the Babies, by Eloise Greenfield, which is another nonfiction picture book about midwives. Maybe it's because of the prevalence of blue in both books, but I think it also has a lot to do with the ways in which Minter tackles nonfiction subject matter. This is a man unafraid to make facts pretty. His art always presents more than you’d find in the text. Some (many) nonfiction illustrators take the text at face value. If a page were about the blue found in the belly of a shellfish, they would draw the shellfish. When Minter does it, however, he breaks the page down into a range of different parts. In the center he places a Phoenician statue of a dog with a snail in its mouth. To the sides are white outlines of people and wonderful reeds and birds and leaves. There’s only one spot of blue on the whole page, but your eye goes right to it. Minter stands out because when he accessorizes a scene, what he adds only embellishes. It never detracts or distracts. It’s a fine line that he walks like a friggin’ tightrope walker.
A couple years ago I remember listening to an episode of the podcast Radiolab named Why Isn’t the Sky Blue? It took a deep dive into the color, noting that in ancient texts like The Odyssey or The Illiad there are no mentions of the color blue. In the course of the show you learn that across all cultures, words for colors appear in stages. And blue? Blue always comes last. Maybe it has to do with the sheer difficulty of capturing it and stabilizing it. And while on the outset they haven’t much in common, there’s another 2022 picture book release that I wouldn’t mind pairing alongside Blue. Lindsay Ward’s Pink Is Not a Color doesn’t take as deep a dive into its shade as Blue does, but both books revel in upsetting expectations and upending the myths surrounding their colors. Tonally they couldn’t be more different, but it’s that very difference that might make them a good pairing together. For the enterprising art teacher it’s something to consider.
To understand why I think that this book has a chance to make a difference in this world, you need only look at how the book ends. The final line in the book sticks the landing and sticks it hard. It reads, “Maybe because blue has such a complicated history of pain, wealth, invention, and recovery, it’s become a symbol of possibility, as vast and deep as the bluest sea, and as wide open and high as the bluest sky.” So the book is acknowledging this complicated past, but ending on a note of hope for kids. Right now, we’re living in an age where certain people in this country are attempting to remove any books that touch on our country’s complicated past. Books like this one are the antidote to such simplistic thinking, in more ways than one. I can only hope and pray it gets into the hands of the kids out there that need its message. Which is to say, all of them.
October 25, 2022
A beautifully illustrated book, telling the complicated story of my favorite color!
April 18, 2023
Fascinating and captivating! A wonderful book that describes the history of the color blue in a way that I've never seen done before.
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November 25, 2023The color blue is fascinating ! This book was wonderful!! In this book, the author talks about the history, the wealth, invention, and how blue symbolizes a lot of things. I really enjoyed this book! I love how the author went in depth about how it was first discovered in different countries and how they wanted to produce more of that color. Blue is one of the most popular colors and it's interesting how far the color has gone. One of the themes for this book is perseverance. This is one of the themes because throughout the book the author talks about how people in different countries had to work hard and think of other ways to produce the color blue. Throughout history, this color is beautiful and important so they couldn't give up. A good example would be Adolf von Baeyer because he tried to make the color blue without having to harm an animal or plant. It took him 40 years to find the solution and he did it! Another theme would be cultural interaction. This is the second theme because throughout the book, we see how cultures interact with making the color blue. We see the history and what they think symbolizes the color blue. An example would be Italy thinking that the color blue should be the color of their painting, Israel using the color for the drapes hung in the temple, and Liberian folktale using blue because they believe it symbolizes the connection between God and humans. The genre of this book is informational. The reason why is because this book centralizes on the history of the color blue. Through reading this book, I learned that blue isn't just a color, it comes from a long history and that's why it's also an emotion.
This was a WOW book for me because I enjoyed learning the history. It was great learning how this color has changed overtime. Some literary devices that I found In this book is metaphor and symbolism. An example of a metaphor is when the author said "A vast and deep as the bluest sea, and as wide open and high as the bluest sky". An example of symbolism would be how other countries symbolized the color blue. In example would be blue symbolizing feeling sad, holy, pure, prize, rich, and more. I would consider this book to be an anti-bias book because this book centralized on the history of blue and didn't have any biases.
This was a WOW book for me because I enjoyed learning the history. It was great learning how this color has changed overtime. Some literary devices that I found In this book is metaphor and symbolism. An example of a metaphor is when the author said "A vast and deep as the bluest sea, and as wide open and high as the bluest sky". An example of symbolism would be how other countries symbolized the color blue. In example would be blue symbolizing feeling sad, holy, pure, prize, rich, and more. I would consider this book to be an anti-bias book because this book centralized on the history of blue and didn't have any biases.
August 14, 2023
A history of the color blue and what humans used to recreate the color in paints and fabric dyes through time.
The author does a great job of breaking down this history into a bite size book that kids can easily understand. She does an excellent job of explaining how blue was so rare and sought after and intertwined with the suffering of many people along the way, explaining things like why blue is a symbol of sorrow, why it was/is tied to royalty or religion in many cultures, and how this quest for blue has seeped down into common things like why 1st prize is a blue ribbon. It's an excellently done picture book microhistory for kids. And the artwork both helps explain things mentioned as well as exploring all the shades of blue.
The author does a great job of breaking down this history into a bite size book that kids can easily understand. She does an excellent job of explaining how blue was so rare and sought after and intertwined with the suffering of many people along the way, explaining things like why blue is a symbol of sorrow, why it was/is tied to royalty or religion in many cultures, and how this quest for blue has seeped down into common things like why 1st prize is a blue ribbon. It's an excellently done picture book microhistory for kids. And the artwork both helps explain things mentioned as well as exploring all the shades of blue.
April 18, 2022
Blue is a fascinating and informative look into the history of the colour blue, how we have viewed it throughout history, the process of making into dyes throughout history (including the brutality of indigo plantations worked by enslaved people), and how a chemical blue was developed to make the colour accessible for everyone. The art is absolutely stunning. The book is overall fantastic. Highly recommended, but especially anyone interested in history, anything that can be dyed, or the colour blue itself.
June 2, 2022
My very favorite picture book of the year. Fiction and non-fiction. There has never been anything like it. I am not sure how many awards Blue will win in 2023. Two? Three? It will deserve all those and more. Glorious writing and matching glorious illustrations by Caldecott award winner Daniel Minter. Get this one gang. Trust me!
February 1, 2023
The color blue’s origin story. Amazing history of the color blue from 4500 BC when lapis lazuli was discovered and used to make rare jewelry for Ancient Egyptians to today where blue is as common as everyday. Did you know that long, long ago, blue dye was made from snails and shellfish?
The color blue is woven through folklore, cultural identity, religion, slavery, science, emotions, music, and art. This is a truly fascinating, gorgeously illustrated, picture book.
The color blue is woven through folklore, cultural identity, religion, slavery, science, emotions, music, and art. This is a truly fascinating, gorgeously illustrated, picture book.
November 10, 2025
Both the text and images are glorious. I learned so much from this book through each of these elements, particularly in the really deep history of the color across continents, cultures, and various technologies ancient and modern. This is a book I will absolutely return to again and use in my research and teaching.
August 12, 2022
Gorgeous, evocative illustrations. Relatable text, excellent back matter. I read three articles used for source material and can see how the author took that information and made it accessible for young readers. Superbly done.
December 30, 2022
Fascinating book of the history of the color BLUE! Scientist Adolf von Baeyer earned a Nobel prize for creating a chemical blue because it was so hard to get it from natural sources (snails, rocks, etc). Thus everyone was able to wear this beautiful color instead of only the very rich!
February 10, 2023
Very nice picture book with some serious info for young ones on the origin of the color we paint, color and dye with. Illustrations are gorgeous. Who knew blue could be so precious or so costly . The history isn't always pretty.
March 24, 2022
great history lesson and stunning art
May 1, 2022
Kudos to Nana Eksa Brew-Hammond and Daniel Minter for this unique and exquisite picture book. I love it.
March 7, 2023
Outstanding illustrations and a fascinating story. Who knew Blue was such an interesting color?
March 16, 2023
This book is about the history of the color blue. It is meant to be non fiction, but doesn’t read as informational text. It is more of a narrative story. What stood out to me the most were the illustrations!
Displaying 1 - 30 of 315 reviews