Tomorrow is Odd Socks Day, a day which was created to increase the awareness of blindness and vision impairment within our community. For a person who is blind not being able to see colours can be very distressing. Just choosing matching socks is one of the many challenges they face.
This is a good time to have children experience a life that is different from their own. Ask children how they know something is red, blue, green etc? Listen to what they say and how much emphasis they put on 'seeing'. Then introduce The Black Book of Colours by Menina Cottin and Rosana Faria. This extraordinary book emphasises other ways of 'seeing' using the other four senses in the way that a blind child needs to. The format makes this book unique. All the pages are black. The text is written firstly in Braille and then in a white font. The illustrations are textured rather than coloured. Reading this book is very different from reading other picture books and it should lead to some very interesting discussion.
Ah! I love this book, and my eldest was fascinated with it for a long time. So glad you've added it to the round up today.
ReplyDelete