Introducing Puce

Any kids who learned to describe things in Crayola-crayon-language will be attracted to Naming Colors (HarperCollins: $16; ages 7 to 10). Ariane Dewey collects zesty facts and stories about color terms and blends them into a vibrant discourse, brightly illustrated. The index alone--well over 100 color words, in color--is worth the price of the book. Coincidentally, a second book on the same high-interest theme is out, for older kids. In When Blue Meant Yellow: How Colors Got Their Names (Henry Holt: $14.95, ages 11 and up), Jeanne Heifetz takes a more scholarly approach, offering a distinctive dictionary of more than 300 color labels and their sometimes bizarre history and etymology.

Every child starts out as a natural, right-brained artist. Perhaps the best series for those who continue in this direction is “First Impressions.” Each of these books--there are about 15 so far--takes on a single artist and explores him or her in depth. The books are beautifully designed, and written too intelligently to ever condescend or bore. The latest addition is Frank Lloyd Wright, by Malibu author Susan Goldman Rubin, a welcome expansion of the series into the realm of architecture (Abrams: $19.95; ages 10 and up).

A simply gorgeous art book outside the Abrams series is Focus: Five Women Photographers (Albert Whitman: $18.95; ages 9 and up). In surveying the life and work of women from Julia Margaret Cameron and Margaret Bourke-White to contemporary American Sandy Skoglund, author Sylvia Wolf emerges with a visionary history of photography.

Children’s book authors are justly famous for taking pale, prosaic topics and enveloping them in a colorful treatment. Kimberly Olson Fakih manages this feat in Off the Clock: A Lexicon of Time Words and Expressions (Ticknor & Fields: $13.95; ages 10 and up). Her elastic concept of time encompasses such notions as the blink of an eye (how long does this really take?), day keepers (those who, in Guatemalan Indian culture, tell others how to use their time well), dream time (the Australian aborigine belief that what happens in dreams is more important than what happens in life), and the mysteries of reading time (suspension of disbelief erases clock time, for example). From “once upon a time” to “time of the angels,” this makes a rewarding excursion for browsers, especially as the approaching millennium makes the concept of time more boggling than ever.

Books for kids are increasingly bold in tackling the ultimate in “colorful” subjects--check out It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex and Sexual Health (Candlewick: $19.95; ages 10 and up, parental discretion advised). Yes, it’s a book on human sexuality, one for ‘90s kids--utterly contemporary and comprehensive. Author Robie Harris doesn’t beat around the bush, but doesn’t scare, either. Artist Michael Emberley contributes tricky illustrations that are anatomically correct when necessary, and amusing elsewhere. Highly recommended for talking your way through just about any embarrassing interrogation your ever-curious kids can devise. Every single one of the matters I have been grilled on by my stepdaughters gets covered here--too late for me, they’re teen-agers now, but perhaps not for you.