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 presence of all three primary colors is black. The secondary colors are the same as the primary colors from additive mixing, and vice versa. This is not an accident. By mixing additive secondary colors subtractively one can reachieve the primary additive colors. Subtractive mixing is used to create a variety of colors when printing on paper by combining a small number of ink colors, and also when painting. Red is created by mixing magenta and yellow (removing green and blue). Green is created by mixing cyan and yellow (removing red and blue respectively). Blue is created by mixing cyan and