For those parents, teachers of the deaf and therapists who wish to use it as a speech and language development resource, the book integrates listening and spoken language (LSL) strategies, which the author employed when teaching her own daughter (who is profoundly deaf and aided by cochlear implants) to listen and speak. These strategies include:

Audition before vision: New characters and new colours are described in words on the page before we actually see them, allowing the child’s brain to process the auditory information prior to the visual information.

Using rhyming verse to develop phonological awareness.

Talking ahead - what comes next? As the book introduces new colours and new characters one by one, the reader and the child can have great fun guessing and discussing which colour and which character might be revealed next.

Practicing auditory closure: Structured as a poem which repeats and builds as the pages turn, the book offers multiple opportunities to practice auditory closure (when the reader pauses and allows the child to fill in the next word or phrase).

Strengthening auditory memory: Children will naturally want to join in with reciting the poem as it repeats and builds throughout the book. The adult reader can pause periodically to allow the child to recite as much as they can from memory. After one or two readings of the book, the adult can also prompt the child to remember the order in which the colours and characters are revealed from beginning to end.

Expansion of vocabulary: This book is a celebration of colour… but it doesn’t just utilise the most common names for the most common colours. It encourages children to expand their descriptive vocabulary to include different names for different colours, as well as describing the properties of different colours and what they represent.

Developing an understanding and appreciation of humour: This book is funny - it has an amusing storyline and highly entertaining imagery, ideal for initiating discussions with children about what makes them laugh and why certain things are funny. Why is it funny to see Mr Mellow flying his kite at night? Is a kangaroo usually blue? Have you ever seen a turquoise turtle (who wishes he was orange) balancing on the post of a ruby-red bed?

Developing emotional intelligence and theory of mind: A central concept woven into the book is the exploration of preferences: different people (or animals in this case!) like different things – in the book, this is expressed through different characters liking different colours for different reasons. This can open up wonderful conversations with children about their own preferences, why they have these preferences and why different people might not always feel the same way they do – and why that’s okay!