The Colour Thief

Zot’s world is a grey and colourless one, and he and all the other inhabitants are a depressed lot.  From his mountain top, Zot can see the wonderfully bright and cheerful earth below, and he desperately wants to visit it.  Off he goes in his space ship, and once there, he revels in the brilliant reds and blues and greens.  He doesn’t just revel though.  With his special alien powers, he is able to gather all the colours into his suitcase, and one by one they disappear, leaving the earth a dull and grey place, the only exception being a boy’s orange balloon.  He covets the orange colour too, but when he sees the boy’s face, he begins to realise what he has done, and that taking things from other beings is not a fair thing to do.  Earth is restored, and the boy, being a generous lad, gives his orange balloon to Zot.  That one bit of bright colour on Zot’s planet makes all the inhabitants happy!  The art work in this book is striking in both imagination and execution.  The contrast between the dull alien world of potato-shaped beings and the crystal-clear brilliance of earth is magical, and the simple truth that it is wrong to take something that belongs to someone else is expressed with subtlety.  Alborozo is an artist to conjure with!