The Color Kittens The Color Kittens The Color Kittens is a children's book by Margaret Wise Brown, illustrated by Alice and Martin Provensen published as part of the Little Golden Books series in 1949. The story revolves around two kittens, "Hush" and "Brush," who attempt to create green paint through mixing their other paints. Their attempts lead to a variety of different hues—none of them green. The book's famous catch phrase is "Blue is blue, and red is red! They still need green!" Children's book author and illustrator Paul O. Zelinsky, for whom the book was a childhood favorite and inspiration, said that,
Color mixing about mixing colors. To explain the mechanism, let us consider mixing red paint with yellow paint. The red paint is red because when the ambient light strikes it, the composition of the material is such that it absorbs all other colors in the visible spectrum except for red. The red light, not being absorbed, reflects off the paint and is what we see. This same mechanism describes the color of all material objects -- note that light is not a material object -- and so applies to the yellow paint as well. Making recourse to the figure above demonstrating additive