Red Light Green Light

Entry Number: 50
Title: Red Light Green Light
Author: Margaret Wise Brown
Illustrator: Leonard Weisgard
Publisher: Scholastic
Year: 1944, 1994
ISBN: 978-0590445597
Genre: Fiction
Topics: transportation, colors, traffic, safety, direction
Age Group: 2-6
Awards: n/a
Dewey Category: n/a
Format: Picturebook

In another magical duet of perfect prose and spectacular illustration, award winners Margaret Wise Brown and Leonard Weisgard pair up for an imaginative take on the simple notion of red light stop and green light go. We arrive in a dimly lit, gritty gray and brown town that is just emerging from slumber. The only color is the flashing red and green of the traffic signals on the roads. As pages turn, people and cars and animals alike, emerge from each of their unique homes—a house, a tent, a garage, and each of them “goes” out into the world. When the light turns red, so do the cars, people, and animals. Everyone moves their fastest in a striking double-page spread of roads and lights and cars and all things that “go.” The pacing of the words either flows or stops in perfect harmony with the images of red and green. This captivating story closes at the end of day, when all that goes, eventually goes home, and all that is left is darkness and the traffic signal going and stopping all the nightlong.