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 result is black. If all three primary colors are showing, the result is white. When red and green combine, the result is yellow. When red and blue combine, the result is magenta. When blue and green combine, the result is cyan. Additive mixing is used in television and computer monitors to produce a wide range of colors using only three primary colors. A pixel is a juxtaposition of these three primary colors. Projection televisions typically have three projectors, one for each primary color. The mixing of colored physical substances corresponds to subtractive color mixing, hence it corresponds to our intuition