Colours aren’t they fascinating? They can light up a room, brighten a day, and even change your mood. Isabella Blue was fascinated with colours. Isabella saw colours everywhere and Isabella loved every one of them. When people asked little Isabella what her favourite colour was, she would respond, “All of them.”
Isabella never wore just one colour. She always wore at least three or four at once. On a particular morning Isabella was wearing a purple top with lots of colourful dots, blue pants with multicoloured stripes, hot pink socks and a lovely bright red scarf in her hair. Her mother would often ask Isabella, “Can’t you choose just one or two colours to wear?” But Isabella could not.
“One colour would be plain and boring. I’d just blend in with everything else if I wore just one ordinary colour,” she protested. Isabella’s mother tired and tried to convince her to tone down her passion for colours, but to her mothers’ dismay, nothing seemed to discourage Isabella’s colourful ways.
At school Isabella continued her colourful approach. Her teacher was distraught. Every piece of work was full of colour! No matter how hard Mrs. Wentzel tried to discourage her, Isabella always had to work in colour, purple for this, yellow for that, and blue or maybe orange for extra zing.
After a long day of school Isabella was walking home. In her hand she had a note from Mrs. Wentzel discussing her dismay that Isabella always had to use colour in all her work. Isabella couldn’t see that there was a problem. She did her work. What was wrong with making it more beautiful with her colours? What was Isabella going to do?
As she was walking and pondering what she was going to tell her mother about the problem at school, she suddenly came upon a blue dot just in the middle of the sidewalk. As Isabella walked further along she came upon a green dot, then a purple dot, and a then a pink dot. Isabella thought this was quite peculiar.
Isabella stepped on one of the colours to see what would happen. Nothing seemed different. Nothing seemed to change. Isabella decided to step on each of the coloured dots. Finally Isabella reached her house. “Oh no,” she thought, “Mom is going to kill me. My shoes are all covered in paint.” She thought secretly how lovely they were all covered in blue, purple, green and pink.
Isabella opened her front door and called to her mother, to tell her that she was home. Rainbow, the dog, bounced to the door. Judy Blue, Isabella’s mother, came down the stairs to greet her. Isabella was bracing herself for her mother’s explosion about her clean white shoes being covered in paint, but Judy Blue did not say a word. Isabella put down her bag and there were coloured handprints on her bag. There were coloured splotches all over Rainbow. She handed her mother the note the Mrs. Wentzel had given her. To Isabella’s surprise the note that had been pink was now a deep green. Her mom told Isabella to run upstairs to wash her hands. Isabella was thinking if she could just wash her hands, everything would be all right and her mom would not notice. Isabella knew something was wrong, but it was fun at the same time.
Isabella washed her hands. The water changed colours. So did the tap and the sink. “What is going on?” puzzled Isabella. Everything that Isabella had touched had changed colour. She went in her room and began touching everything. Everything Isabella touched turned into a different colour. Isabella was in heaven. She ran all over her room decorating everything with her touch. Her room became full of colour, colours that Isabella had never seen before. “What a wonderful thing” Isabella thought. “If I can do this in my room, I can do this in the whole house.” And that is just what Isabella did. Isabella went back into the in the bathroom. The bathtub became a hot pink colour, the sink purple, and the toilet green. The water in the toilet was a liquid rainbow. Each time she flushed a new colour appeared. Every time Isabella touched something a new colour appeared and she got more and more excited.
Then Isabella went into her older brother’s room. “Oh,” she thought, “won’t this be fun.” Ben’s room that was quite dull, it had no bright colours at all. Isabella got under way. In minutes Ben’s room was no longer boring. Ben now had a gold and blue bed, a red dresser with polka dots, and a bright yellow closet with glitter on it. Isabella was in love with Ben’s new room. Ben’s room, the bathroom, and her own room were done. Now for her parents room! Isabella began to decorate her parents’ room as well.
Mrs. Blue realized that Isabella had been upstairs for a very long time. Her mom called out to Isabella. No answer. “Strange,” Mrs. Blue thought, “What could that child be doing?” Mrs. Blue went upstairs and found Isabella dancing around her parents’ room. Mrs. Blue said, “What on earth are you doing, Isabella?” Isabella stopped dead in her tracks. She was afraid of what her mother might say, but Mrs. Blue simply asked why Isabella was dancing in her room when she should be in her own room starting her homework. She told Isabella to go do her homework and then come down for dinner.
Isabella expected her mother to yell about all the colours on the wall. Mrs. Blue’s bed was now bright red with gold dots on it. The chair was brilliant turquoise, and the dresser was mauve. Isabella just shook her head and went to her room.
A few minutes later Mrs. Blue came into Isabella’s room to see if she needed any help with her homework. Her mom made no comment about the new décor. Isabella was very surprised. Mrs. Blue said she was going to put some of Ben’s clothes away and then it would be time for dinner. Isabella waited and waited. She was ready to hear a shriek form her mother, but no sound came from Ben’s room. Soon she heard her mother rattling in the kitchen getting dinner ready.
As Isabella was finishing her homework, Ben came home from soccer practice. Ben ran up stairs and hollered that he was going to take a shower. Isabella heard him close the door to the bathroom and heard him say, “What the heck?” Ben called to his mother and asked what happened to the bathroom. Mrs. Blue came into the bathroom and asked Ben what he was talking about. Ben was flabbergasted. He said “What about this purple sink.”
Mrs. Blue said, “What purple sink? The sink is the same colour it has always been, off white”. Ben did not know what to think. He went into his room and was flabbergasted.
“Mom, Mom” Ben yelled. “My bed and dresser are all different colours!”
Mrs. Blue asked Ben, “Did you hit your head on the goal post when you were playing soccer?”
“No,” Ben replied. Suddenly he figured it out. “ISABELLA” Ben yelled. Isabella came cautiously into the room. Ben asked, “Did you do this?”
“Yep” Isabella replied cheerfully, “Don’t you like it? I do and mom doesn’t seem to mind either.”
Ben, said, “Don’t be silly. It’s not that mom doesn’t mind! She just can’t see that you are painting all these colours all over the house. Only you and I can tell. I know that you did it is because of your fascination with colours. Ben continued, “I do not care what you have to do, but you have to get rid of all these colours.”
Isabella didn’t know what to do. She loved the colours all over the house and her parents did not mind them because they could not see them. Ben was ready to kill her every time he saw her. Isabella thought, “If children were the only other people that could see all the colours then Ben could not do anything to her because no one would believe him.” Isabella loved to bother Ben. Ben was always picking on her, teasing her, and taking her things. It was time for Isabella to get revenge.
Over the next few weeks, Isabella tortured Ben with all her colours. Ben would have to go to school in polka dot shirts and striped shorts. But there was nothing Ben could do. Isabella did not know how she got this extraordinary talent and had no intention of getting rid of it. She loved being able to surround her self in colour day in and day out.
One day Isabella was cleaning her room and she sneezed five or six times. Each time she sneezed colours shot out and landed on the bunch of papers in front of her. Each sneeze was not just one colour, but many colours. After each sneeze colours started to disappear from her room. Isabella could do nothing about it. Each sneeze took away colour and brought the rooms back to what they were before – dull and boring. When Isabella had finished sneezing, she no longer had her power of colour. She ran into the bathroom, no more purple sink, no more coloured toilet bowl water. Isabella ran in to Ben’s room and to Ben’s delight his clothes and room were back to normal. Isabella slowly walked back to her room, sad that she was no longer able to create the colours she loved. She sat looking at her uninteresting room once again and suddenly she noticed the papers. The papers that she sneezed on were beautiful, full of wonderous colours, colours that simply encompassed the paper. Isabella was quite excited by this find and tacked the paper on her wall as a remembrance of the last few weeks and her adventures with colours.
Just then, Mrs. Blue walked by Isabella’s room and asked her how she was getting along. “I love your use of colour on those papers on your desk,” she said, Isabella could not believe it.
She blurted, “Mom, you can see that picture with all the colours?”
“Of course, dear,” Mrs. Blue responded. “Do you think I am blind?”
