Mix It Up! by Herve Tullet

Hello, Story Seekers!

We have paint today.

Red paint. Yellow paint. Blue paint. Paint to rub, squish, smear, mix and generally mess around with.

Except there isn't actually any paint.

That's the trick.

Mix It Up! was written and illustrated by Hervé Tullet, the creator of Press Here, and he has turned an ordinary printed book into a pretend art table.

If you're new to Book Explorers, I'm Jungle Jimmy the Book Explorer, children's author, dad, and longtime performer for kids. Readit the Book Worm is my childlike sidekick, and whenever a book starts telling him to poke things with his fingers, I know which one of us is going in first.

Go ahead, Readit.

Try not to get paint on anything.

Book Breakdown

Mix It Up! begins with a little gray spot and a request to tap it.

Then color arrives.

Soon Tullet has red, yellow and blue sitting on the pages, and he starts asking the reader to experiment.

Touch one color to another.

Rub them together.

What happens?

Blue and yellow become green. Red and blue make purple. Red and yellow make orange.

Then it gets messier. The reader presses, rubs, tilts, shakes, and closes the book to squish the colors together. Later Tullet adds white and black to make colors lighter and darker.

Here's the clever part. Nothing physically changes.

It's paper.

You know it's paper. I know it's paper. The kid knows it's paper.

Everybody plays along anyway.

The page turn is what makes it work. Tullet asks the child to do something to the pretend paint, and the next page reveals the result. That small delay matters, because the child gets to predict before finding out whether they were right.

And the color lesson sits inside the game. Tullet never stops to announce that today we are learning about primary and secondary colors.

He puts down blue and yellow and effectively says, "Try this."

Much better.

The pictures are equally direct. Big blobs, fingerprints, smears, spatters and streaks against mostly white pages. The mixed colors look imperfectly mixed, too. When blue and yellow become green, you can still see traces of the originals around the edges.

I like that a great deal.

It looks less like somebody clicked the green button on a computer and more like somebody stuck a finger in paint and rubbed it around.

Tullet's words stay conversational. There's no character leading us through, because the reader has that job. The relationship is between the voice giving instructions and the kid following them.

And the kid is busy.

Chronicle published it in September 2014 for ages 3 to 5. I'm leaving the page count out: the current publisher listing says 64 and contemporary reviews of the original say 56, and I'd rather tell you the sources disagree than quietly pick one.

For teachers and librarians: TeachingBooks lists it at PK to 2 and reports both Lexile and ATOS as currently unavailable. No verified word count, AR quiz or Guided Reading level either, so I'm not printing any.

Jungle Jimmy's Journal

I said this about Tap the Magic Tree and Mix It Up! proves it again.

Give kids a job.

Thirty years performing for children will show you how fast participation changes attention. There is an enormous difference between showing a room of kids something and making them believe they're responsible for what happens next.

Tullet lives in that difference.

He could have made a perfectly useful book demonstrating that red and yellow make orange.

Instead he makes the child rub the colors together first.

Now they own the discovery.

And this is where Mix It Up! separates itself from Tap the Magic Tree. Matheson uses participation to move a tree through the seasons. Tullet turns participation into experimentation.

What happens if I mix these?

What if I add white?

What if I add black?

Okay, what happens if I do THIS?

That's how I'd read it too. Don't rush to the answer. Let the kid predict.

Blue plus yellow.

Stop.

"What do you think we're getting?"

Now turn.

With a group you get an instant chorus of guesses. With one child you can hand the book over and let them run the experiment.

There's one practical problem, though I hesitate to call it a problem.

This book may make children want actual paint.

Kirkus ended its review with essentially that warning, and they're onto something. Tullet makes those blobs look wet enough to touch. After a whole book of pretending to mix paint with your fingers, a child may reasonably ask why we're still pretending.

So perhaps don't read this five minutes before you need to leave the house.

Readit's Review

Wait.

You're telling me I can stick my finger in all this paint and I don't have to wash my hands?

This is excellent news.

I liked squishing the colors together because you close the book and then open it to see what happened.

Blue and yellow make green.

Red and blue make purple.

Red and yellow make orange.

I would remember those because I DID IT.

Well, pretend did it.

Same thing.

Also the paint looks like somebody really smeared it around with their fingers. Some of the blobs aren't neat circles and there are fingerprints and splatters.

That's better.

Neat paint is suspicious.

I would definitely want real paint after reading this.

I would also definitely get it on the table.

What Others Think

This one has a strong reader trail.

Goodreads has Mix It Up! at 4.37 out of 5 from 4,680 ratings and 517 reviews.

The pattern isn't hard to find. Readers keep describing children staying engaged because they aren't hearing about colors, they're tapping, rubbing, pressing, guessing, and watching the next page reveal what supposedly happened.

One reviewer called it very engaging and mentioned that even her nine-year-old laughed along.

That's worth noting, because Chronicle officially puts it at ages 3 to 5. The color lesson fits preschool and kindergarten squarely, but the pretend magic stretches further when an older kid decides to play.

The professional reviewers noticed the illusion too. Publishers Weekly praised the way the mixed colors still show traces of the originals underneath. Kirkus pointed out how convincingly wet and textured the paint looks on a dry printed page.

And the reader feedback keeps returning to what happens after the book closes.

Kids want to try it.

That may be the strongest compliment available to a book about making art.

The negatives are thin. The real limitation is built into the idea: it works best when a child can physically participate. Kirkus specifically recommended one-on-one. You can use it with a group, but somebody has to be the official page tapper unless you're prepared for twelve children attacking the book simultaneously.

I'd establish the rules first.

Belly Laugh Scale

3 out of 5: Solid Chuckles

Mix It Up! isn't trying to be a comedy book, and I'm not handing it a high score because children enjoy themselves.

But there's more funny here than a straight color lesson.

There's the ridiculous pleasure of smacking and shaking a book because the book told you to. There's the pretend magic. There's the surprise of opening a page after you've squished the paint.

And there's a good chance a kid gets increasingly enthusiastic about following instructions.

That escalates quickly.

So we're at a three.

The learning is driving.

The giggles are riding shotgun.

Final Explorer Verdict

Mix It Up! is a strong pick for preschoolers and kindergarteners learning how colors work, especially kids who would rather touch, try, predict and experiment than sit through an explanation.

I'd also put it in the hands of preschool and kindergarten teachers, librarians, art teachers, and anybody planning a color-mixing activity.

Read the book.

Then get out the paint.

Because Tullet has already done the hard part. He's made them want to try.

It's on our list of the best interactive picture books, and if this is the kind of book your kid responds to, Tullet's Press Here is the one that started it and Tap the Magic Tree runs the same trick across a year of seasons.

And if what your child likes most is a book giving them something to actually do, How To Make Your Sock Talk carries that idea somewhere else entirely. This time the end result isn't purple.

It's a talking sock.

Until next time, keep exploring.

And somebody please wipe off the table.

Jungle Jimmy & Readit