Code Blue

So, who hasn’t stayed up too late watching TV, maybe having got sucked into a horror (or just horrible) movie? Me too.

This starts the premise of Blue Aliens: an adventure in color by Tony Porto and 3CD (823 P838B PIC BK). In this really scary movie, aliens arrive on Earth and begin eating everything that is green – green plants, green bugs, green eyeballs, tennis balls, Green Bay, you name it.

But in comes Mom to rudely interrupt and send the narrator off to bed. In the morning, with aliens still lingering in the imagination of our narrator, life takes a turn from green to blue. Aliens aren’t eating green things but blue -- for real; thus there is an explanation for missing blue jeans, blueberries from the waffles, chunks of blue sky and water, though even aliens draw the line at ‘Meatloaf Surprise’, the cafeteria lunch special which is a putrid blue colour. Ewww…

And on it goes.

Lots of puns along the way incorporating the colour blue like ‘out of the blue’ and ‘blue moon’.

Also, included are tidbits of trivia related to the things that the aliens seem to be eating. For instance, did you know that the praying mantis is the only insect that can turn its head from side to side? Or, that blueberries were originally known as star berries? Or, that 17 trees are saved for every one ton of blue-lined paper that is recycled?

Overall, a very fun book. The illustrations contribute to the farcical humour with bold, photographic illustrations, bright colours and wonky fonts.

Good potential here to tie in with a science unit on colour. It might also be used as a model for both the illustration style and as a way to focus attention on a specific colour(or its lack) and find sources of it in nature and in our own lives.

I think most elementary kids will enjoy this book, the younger ones for the goofiness of the story and the older kids for the graphics and trivia.