What Color is Love?

By Joan Walsh Anglund

Copyright 1966

I always believed that the books written and illustrated by Joan Walsh Anglund were special.  I grew up hearing the story that one of my aunts attended Kindergarten with her and that even at such a young age, her artistic ability was evident.  Anglund’s simple yet beautiful drawings of children are easily recognized.  The heads are very large for the bodies, and the eyes are the only visible facial features.  In all of her books, the simple and beautiful drawings are matched with simply beautiful text.  

What Color is Love? was published in 1966, the year I was born.  The dust jacket is long gone from my copy and my personalized bookplate is pasted inside the front cover.  While I remember reading it and looking at the pictures as a child, I know I never fully grasped the truth in the words.  I believe I thought it was merely a book about colors. 

“An apple is red, the sun is yellow, the sky is blue, a leaf is green…”

But that’s not the point of this little book.  As Anglund writes, 

“Color is something we see with our eyes, but love is something we see with our heart.”

Colors do make the world a beautiful place.  However, what we see with our eyes is secondary to what we feel or how we act.  What is on the outside is never as important as what is on the inside.