Inspired by the “Book Cloud” that hangs over our front desk, pictured above, welcome to All the Covers of the Rainbow.
We all know the saying “don’t judge a book by its cover,” but that doesn’t mean we can’t appreciate them. A beautiful cover can grab a reader and draw them into the book before they even look at the first page. In this blog series All the Covers of the Rainbow, we’ll highlight a collection of books that share the same cover color.
Today, we’re talking about my favorite color: yellow—the color of sunflowers and daffodils, autumn leaves and egg yolks, lemons, and bumblebees. Yellow is the most visible color on the spectrum and is most quickly processed by the human eye, making it the ideal color for emergency vehicles and school buses. Because of its wide availability, yellow was one of the first colors used in works of art, such as Jan Lievens’ Young Man in a Yellow Robe and Sunflowers by Vincent van Gogh. The caves of Lascaux contain an image of a yellow horse, estimated to be 17,300 years old. Yellow is often associated with happiness, optimism, enlightenment, amusement, and spring. But lurking in the background is a darker side of yellow: cowardice, betrayal, and madness. Some physical illnesses manifest as yellow, including jaundice, malaria, and yellow fever. “Yellow peril” was a xenophobic ideology used against Asian Americans to slow immigration from Asia to the United States. Whether negative or positive, yellow evokes strong emotions in its viewer.
Each book cover below is also a link to purchase the book on Bookshop.org, which supports local, independent bookstores. We also strongly encourage you to support your local bookstores by ordering online. They need our help more than ever, and we need them to stick around.
Written by Matthew Masino
“It is the strangest yellow, that wallpaper! It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw – not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things.”
—Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper
“My cup is yellow
Or not, though not’sImpossible
― Aram Saroyan, Complete Minimal Poems
It’s yellow
“It’s no fun to be yellow. Maybe I’m not all yellow. I don’t know. I think maybe I’m just partly yellow and partly the type that doesn’t give much of a damn if they lose their gloves.”
― J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye
“Uh huh, you know what it is
― Wiz Khalifa, “Black and Yellow”
Black and yellow
Black and yellow
Black and yellow
Black and yellow“
“The books leapt and danced like roasted birds, their wings ablaze with red and yellow feathers.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
Matthew Masino is the Social Media Coordinator for the AWM. He is also a content creator, writer, and theatre director based in Chicago, Illinois. He graduated with a B.F.A. in Theatre Directing from Columbia College Chicago in 2019. As a theatre artist, Matthew has worked with the International Voices Project, the Chicago Fringe Festival, and BYOT Productions. You can learn more by visiting his website www.matthewmasino.com.