A million chameleons visit the zoo, climb a tree, and ride a merry-go-round, changing colour as they go.

I came across A Million Chameleons by chance but was taken with the entertaining way it introduces color identification to young children. The flock of Chameleons journeys together to the zoo, a merry go round and even the skating rink, all the while changing color on each page, which allows for the fun experience of participatory guessing. Young’s illustrations and rhyming narration are both playful and exciting enough for many repeated reads.

When teaching early childhood art lessons, I love to emphasize that there are many different shades of each color and this book does a great job of showing a range of blues, reds and pinks. I also love that it makes the process of learning color easy and fun as the characters are lively and dancing all over the pages while the child gets to guess what color they will change next. It even concludes by introducing the idea of multicolored as the million chameleons change every color hue at the same time! Additionally, this book provides a great example of the wondrous range of colors found in our natural world, sometimes even in one magical creature such as the chameleon.