This Is Orange: A Field Trip Through Color
by Rachel Poliquin; illus. by Julie Morstad
Primary, Intermediate    Candlewick    48 pp.
10/25    9781536230529    $18.99

“We must begin with the orange.” Poliquin’s “field trip through color” kicks off with the “deliciously round and sweet” citrus fruit associated with the shade of the same name and asks the questions, “Which came first? The color or the fruit?” Thus begins an impressively encyclopedic tour through the history of orange, from its etymological origins to its global journey, from India and southern China westward. These facts range from what children are likely to already know—that the color can be produced by mixing red and yellow, for instance—to an array of artistic, scientific, and historical facts. Who knew that the word might first have been used for the color (rather than the fruit) when describing the sleeves of Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scotland, in a 1502 portrait? Morstad incorporates dozens of orange hues for her watercolor and chalk-pastel illustrations of everything from fruit to birds to Rothko’s famous painting Orange and Yellow, with dazzling spreads depicting overflowing-with-orange locations everywhere from Central Park to Michoacán festivals and Kolkatani flower markets. Poliquin employs a frank, informative voice, with asides that demonstrate her awe of the color (“Isn’t it magnificently orange?” she marvels, regarding the mineral crocoite) as well as the limitations of her knowledge (“I don’t know why there are three different International Oranges”). As thoroughly researched as the story is, she takes care never to make it didactic or dull: instead, it shines as an enlightening, passionate treatise on the color.

From the November/December 2025 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.