The Other Fall Colors

The color yellow shouted to me happily this morning and would not leave me alone. It was everywhere. I didn’t mind a bit, since yellow is a color that always makes me happy.

The word ‘yellow’ probably doesn’t appear in as many book titles as ‘red’ or ‘black’ or ‘white’ or even ‘blue.’ (Languages that have only two color words sort into dark and light; languages with three color words give red its own name. Blue? Metaphorical for users of English.) The first yellow-mention title that came to my mind was A Little Yellow Dog, by Walter Mosley, the first Easy Rawlins story I came across. Then, jumping genres and ages, I thought of the yellow house on New Dollar Street where the Moffats lived. That’s The Moffats, by Eleanor Estes, of course. And Vincent van Gogh lived in the yellow house in Arles. But those are houses, not books.


So I started looking for more titles and quickly found...

Yellow Dog, by Martin Amis
The Yellow Admiral, by Patrick O’Brian
The Yellow Fairy Book, by Andrew Lang
Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
A Yellow Raft in Blue Water, by Michael Dorris
Crome Yellow, by Aldous Huxley
The Yellow House Mystery, by Gertrude Chandler Warner
Novel on Yellow Paper, by Stevie Smith

Obviously, this is the tip of an iceberg. Any favorites of yours belong on this list?


Fall is full of color, really a much more colorful season than summer, which can be as monotone in its green as winter in white, except for flowers. Autumn leaves command most of our attention, but fall has its own flowers, too, and I am loving my asters more than ever this year.


When I look closer, I see that the same asters that dance in the breeze are also a lunchroom for bees and caterpillars.