Purplicious

by: Victoria Kann and Elizabeth Kann

Published by: HarperCollins

Reviewed by Liz, Annika, and Lauren Wheeler (age 5 & 4)

(As told to their mother Liz Wheeler)

Meet Pinkalicious, a young girl with an extreme regard for the color pink. We first see her in her self-titled book, and the wordplay is very fun. Pink and her mom make pink cupcakes. She eats a few too many of them and turns pink. Ignoring the doctor’s orders, she eats one more; to her horror, she changes to (gasp!) red. Oh, what to do? Play pink-a-boo and gobble lots of green stuff!

In Purplicious, Pink still loves the color pink. However, her friends tell her “the new color is black…pink is putrid.” Pink defends herself saying pink is not just for babies and little girls. Why, her brother Peter likes the color pink! After a lonely week in her all-pink world, Pink tries vanilla ice cream (too bland) and lashes out at her parents during “pink-pong” because “no one understands me.” But Monday dawns with a much brighter sunrise when a new girl in art class is painting with blue and pink and tells Pinkalicious that “pink is perfect.”

We checked out Pinkalicious from our neighborhood library. My three- and five-year old daughters liked it so much, we decided to find out what else the Kann sisters had written. Behold—Annika and Lauren enjoy Purplicious even more. Their review follows.

What is Purplicious about?

It is about her brother who likes pink and everyone laughed. That’s the silly part. Pinkalicious liked pink and Purplicious likes pink and her brother Peter likes pink. No one else likes pink and she’s all alone. And everyone hates pink. She has a bad week at school because her friends are so mean to her. And now there is a good friend who likes pink and purple. She said, “I think I need some pink…Pink is perfect.”

“Well, it feels nice to read it because I like it a lot,” Annika said. “I like it a lot, too,” Lauren said. “People should rent it who go to the library every day,” Annika said. “It’s so Purplicious. It has lots of purple.”

Armchair Interviews says: A thumbs up from two early readers and consumers of the written word.