One

Blue is a quiet color. Red’s a hothead who likes to pick on Blue. Yellow, Orange, Green, and Purple don’t like what they see, but what can they do? When no one speaks up, things get out of hand — until One comes along and shows all the colors how to stand up, stand together, and count. As budding young readers learn about numbers, counting, and primary and secondary colors, they also learn about accepting each other's differences and how it sometimes just takes one voice to make everyone count.

Children's Literature

Otoshi uses simple splashes of color reminiscent of Lionni's Little Blue and Little Yellow with the numbers from one through seven to tell a story of courage. Blue is a quiet color, very different from the others. He is generally happy, except when he is with Red. Red picks on and belittles Blue, and the other colors are afraid to challenge him, until One arrives. Red tells One to stop laughing and making the others laugh. One simply says, "No." The other colors become numbers two through five as they decide they will stand up and say "No" as well. Blue wants to "count," too. He stands up and becomes a blue six. When everyone is standing up together, red shrinks. But One says, "Red can count too." Red becomes seven, and finally "everyone counts." Bits of watercolor blobs on white pages effective create a story, and the reader becomes a believer. Otoshi demonstrates how small stimuli can become effective conveyors of meaning if one allows the imagination to work. One has the potential to stir discussions not only of the meaning of illustration in picture books, but of the problem of bullies and how to deal with it. Reviewer: Ken Marantz and Sylvia Marantz