How Do You make a Rainbow?

This rainbow-coloured picture book for children aged 2- 6 years, written by Caroline Crowe and illustrated by Cally Johnson-Isaacs, is an up-lifting story that helps to teach children their colours.

It also celebrates love, positivity and the special relationship between a child and a grandparent.

In the middle of Lockdown 3, after 12 months’ survival of a global pandemic this joyful book, that celebrates kindness, community and nature and is a welcome reminder that Springtime is just around the corner.

We decided to capture the opinions of more than one young reader so we asked nine young children from our review panel what they thought of How Do You make a Rainbow?

If you scroll down to the Kids’ Reviews you will see that they give this story, the illustrations and the activity pages a big thumbs-up!

We invited their Mums to comment too and this is their favourable feedback:

“A heart-warming story bringing rainbow cheer and helping children associate things with all the colours of the rainbow. It is lovely to see the pages in different colours too.”

“My son really is captivated by the rhyming sentences in this book. He has been listening with intent & asking me to read it again after we finish each time. He has just learnt colours and so he loves that there was colour blocking on the pages. He loved describing the different things he could see like the yellow lemon, green frog, orange pumpkin & more. He refers to the book as “Rainbow book” now and we will be reading it again no doubt! This book is great and a fantastic book to teach colours to toddlers and also the mention of different seasons is a nice touch. Overall we really loved this book!”

“My daughter described this book “as a rainbow recipe” she has loved pointing out the different colours on each page and and we talked about what she associated with each colour. Even down to Grandad wearing a tutu we had a conversation around people being able to wear whatever clothes they liked and how each of us if different. We really have enjoyed reading this book together daily sometimes more than once. It really has that lovely feel good feeling like a hug in a book.”

“A charming book with beautiful illustrations and lots of inspiration for chatting and being creative around the story.”

“This story was very heart warming. I liked the rainbow colour pages through the book. I love the Grandparent/child conversation. The colour aspect gave us plenty to chat about while we were reading the story.”

“A warming look at bringing joy and hope alive.”

“A beautifully illustrated book that evokes happy memories and makes for a  tranquil read.”

“It’s a lovely and delightful story, with a gorgeous meaning behind it.  It has sparked some interesting conversations with my children about what we can do when we feel grey.  The pictures are bright and its so visually entertaining.  A winner!”

“A very well thought out and written book with beautifully engaging illustrations focusing on children’s emotional wellbeing in a sensitive manner at a time when this topic is more important than ever.”

Big thanks to Pan Macmillan, for allowing us to preview this lovely book, and to all the reviewers for their thoughtful comments.