Blue: A History of the Color as Deep as the Sea and as Wide as the Sky

For centuries, the color blue was one of the rarest and most special in the world! People believed the color was sacred, even magical. Artists crushed shiny blue rocks called lapis lazuli from faraway Afghanistan to paint the sky and the sea. Merchants gathered tiny sea snails that made a few precious drops of blue dye for royal robes. Later, a plant called indigo became famous for its deep blue color. It was so popular that whole countries grew it just to make more dye. But it was very hard work for the people forced to grow indigo. Then one day, scientists invented a way to make blue in a lab, and suddenly blue was everywhere—easy to use for clothes, art, and even your favorite jeans! 

Blue: A History of the Color as Deep as the Sea and as Wide as the Sky invites readers on a journey to discover the origins of the color blue, both as a dye and a pigment, and reveals how rare, mysterious, and complicated its history truly is. Through gracefully woven historical snapshots, young readers will be fascinated to learn surprising facts, like how blue dye can be extracted from tiny sea snails. Readers will gain a powerful understanding of the color’s ties to slavery and the harsh realities of indigo production. 

As early as 4500 BC, when miners began extracting lapis lazuli from the earth, people discovered just how rare it was to find the color blue in any form. Crushing these vivid blue stones was the earliest method of creating the pigment. “By 44 BC, many Egyptians, including Queen Cleopatra VII, were applying a bluish mixture around their eyes that looked like eye shadow.” About six centuries later, blue began appearing in sculptures and paintings—but it remained a color reserved for the wealthy and powerful. 

Before long, people discovered a new, though challenging, way to create blue dye. Author Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond invites young readers to marvel at the humble sea snail. Inside its tiny body, “dyers had different ways of releasing the color. In Mexico, they pressed the snail’s foot. In the Middle East, they cracked its shell. Then they waited for the blue to appear.” For those who attempted it, creating snail-blue was incredibly difficult. Each snail produced only one or two drops of dye. Imagine how many snails it would take to color a single royal robe! 

At last, a discovery transformed the difficult process of making blue dye from sea snails into a thing of the past. “In parts of Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, and the Americas, a group of plants in the pea family grew. . . There were a few different ways to get blue from these plants’ green leaves. Indian dyers soaked them in water, while West African dyers crushed and dried them.” The miracle of this discovery was that the blue from indigo plants was not only far less expensive to produce, but also equally vibrant and long-lasting. 

The story reaches a remarkable turning point when a scientific breakthrough changes how blue is made forever. “From the time blue was found, scientists worked hard to make a blue that wasn’t so difficult or cruel to produce. In 1865, scientist Adolf von Baeyer began trying, and forty years later, in 1905, he won the Nobel Prize for creating a chemical blue.”

Each turn of the page reveals a sea of blue awash in complementary tones that dance across the paper. Three-dimensional realism meets flat pattern work, their layers softened by watercolor washes, flowing drips, and textures drawn from the natural world. Illustrator Daniel Minter, recipient of a Caldecott Honor and the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work, traces the remarkable journey of a single color as it travels across the world and through time. 

The book concludes with a captivating double-page spread of supplementary material, featuring an Author’s Note and additional fascinating facts about the color blue. These final pages are well worth exploring, as they uncover surprising pieces of history—especially about the United States. “South Carolina was an important part of the global indigo economy in the mid-1700s. . . For a time, until the Revolutionary War began in 1775, indigo was more profitable than rice to the American economy.” 

The book introduces fascinating new words, like Indigofera and tekhelet. These words might be unfamiliar at first, but they help tell the story of where the color blue comes from. For example, “Afghanistan’s Sar-e-Sang valley” is where people once mined the deep-blue stone called lapis lazuli. And there is “a group of plants in the pea family. . . called Indigofera.” Additionally, “tekhelet is blue made from the secretions of sea snails. . . part of the Jewish High Priest’s uniform was blue.” Each of these words shows how people all over the world have searched for and discovered different ways to create the color blue. 

Although Blue: A History of the Color as Deep as the Sea and as Wide as the Sky is a picture book, it is meant to be shared aloud rather than read independently. Its exploration of the color blue’s long and fascinating history adds depth and makes the story especially engaging when read aloud. 

Younger readers will be drawn to Blue: A History of the Color as Deep as the Sea and as Wide as the Sky again and again, not only for its compelling narrative but also for its vivid illustrations that bring moments in history to life. The image of a sea snail being squeezed to make blue dye is both amusing and memorable, while the story’s uplifting conclusion invites readers to reflect on the color’s meaning: “It’s become a symbol of possibility, as vast and deep as the bluest sea, and as wide open and high as the bluest sky.” 

Sexual Content  

• None 

Violence  

• The story reveals how the history of slavery is deeply connected to the production of indigo dye. It describes how farmers in India and Bangladesh were often tricked or forced into growing indigo plants instead of food crops.  
• In the United States, “some made the African captives they had enslaved farm indigo, calling the plant a cash crop because it brought in a lot of money.”  
• The book also draws a powerful link between this painful history and the birth of American blues music, showing how creative expression can emerge from deep suffering. “We feel ‘blue’ when we’re sad, perhaps because the people who had to dig, grind and grow passed down their painful memories of working the mines or slavery on indigo plantations.” 

Drugs and Alcohol  

• None 

Language  

• None 

Supernatural 

• None 

Spiritual Content  

• The story explains that many cultures view the color blue as sacred because it is so rare. From Liberia to Italy, Indonesia to Israel, blue carries special meaning. In Israel, for example, “blue drapes hung in the temple King Solomon built. And many Jews still wear blue-dyed threads called tekhelet.“ 

by Maureen Lowe