What Colour Is the Wind

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What Color is the Wind? is an interactive sensory book for kids with beautiful illustrations and a simple, engaging story. With plans to release a new album later this year, Charlie is certainly not contemplating retirement and he's optimistic that the Landsborough name will carry on in musical circles for generations to come.

Obviously my 5-year-old daughter likes the book but she’s just one kid. She is not a representative for her species (so to speak). That said, this book just drills home the advantage that physical books have over their electronic counterparts: the sensation of touch. Play with a screen all day if you like, but you will never be able to move your fingers over these raised dots of rain or the rough bark of a tree’s trunk. As children become more immersed in the electronic, they become more enamored of tactile books. The sensation of paper on skin has yet to be replicated by our smooth as silk screens. And this will prove true with kids on the younger end of the scale. I'll agree with Kirkus about the adult designation, though. When I worked for New York Public Library there was a group of special needs adults that would come in that were in need of tactile picture books. We would be asked if we had any on hand that we could hand over to them in some way. There were a few, but our holdings were pretty limited (though I do remember a particularly keen tactile version of The Very Hungry Caterpillar that proved to be a big hit). Those kids would have loved this book, but children of all ages, and all abilities, would feel the same way about it. Kids are never too old for tactile picture books. As such, you could use this book with Kindergartners as well as fifth graders. Little kids will like the fun pictures. Older kids may be inspired by the words as well. We were doing a school assembly on the theme of friendship, so I thought I'd write a song for it. My sister Joyce, who is one of those soppy individuals who tells you she loves you when it's not even your birthday, once sent me a card signed 'To Charlie, my forever friend'. I thought that was a great title and used the song to express my own faith.

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I've a great band and crew and I couldn't not go on stage without singing What Colour is the Wind and My Forever Friend, together with a few older songs we've resurrected and some covers thrown in. So hopefully people will enjoy it." Far from having had a straightforward pathway into a musical career, Charlie has done his fair share of other jobs including working as a navvy on the railways, in a grocery store, in a flour mill, as a postman, a soldier and a primary school teacher. But all the time his dream of being a professional singer refused to go away. The story’s protagonist, whom Herbauts affectionately calls “the little giant,” goes in search of an answer to his synesthetic question. Every piece of nature he encounters gives him a different answer — to the bee, the wind is the warm color of the sun; the old dog, who perceives the world through smell, experiences it as “pink, flowery, pale white”; to the wolf, it smells of the forest; for the mountain, the wind is a bird; for the window, it is the color of time. One Easter Sunday I was playing at a country music club and thought it was an appropriate day to play a gospel music song, and I got an amazing response. Sometimes you are too close to something to be able to appreciate the worth of it. People gave me the belief in those songs long before I had the belief in them myself."

What is essential is invisible to the eye,” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote in The Little Prince. Those bereft of vision, therefore, need not be bereft of the essential — they discern it by means other than sight. His chart-topping success heralded the end of his teaching career. "I taught about six days after that. They gave me early retirement and off I went on the road," reflects Charlie who went on to release some 27 albums and achieve success across the world with his own brand of ballads, blues, country and spiritual music.

The Very Best of Charlie Landsborough Tracklist

I was a grocery store manager railways flour mills you name it and lastly I was a teacher for 14 years but the dream was always a musical long really you ready teach you for 14 years I was is this in Birkenhead yeah in the same area where I lived and it was funny that must have been fun well if part of it was and part of it I mean I was so glad to leave people had this misconception that you were having a wonderful time and it must have been a real you know strain to pull away from it yeah I was so delighted when the Irish people rescued me it was it was so stressful but at the same time it had wonderful aspects to it and I used to get requests in the playground they said me mom said will you play crazy for a tonight in the pub so everybody knew what it would wear me how it really lay but I haven't said that I met wonderful kids and wonderful staff who were still friends now that's brilliant are you still in you're still based in Birkenhead value I am yet although even Peter Lindbergh and a For 22 years I just played in the pubs and clubs and never said a word. Just to lighten it up I started to tell little stories between the songs. I wasn't really aware of how important that was until a fellow from Derbyshire came to me afterwards and said, 'You were grand tonight lad, but I'm a bit disappointed because you hardly told any stories and that's all I came for'. So it's become an important part of the show. I think it gives people an insight into your character." He left school early and worked intermittently as an apprentice telephone engineer, on the railways, and in the flour mills before joining the army. He left after four years, in the early 1960s, and joined a group, The Chicago Sect, in Dortmund, Germany. Returning to England, he married, played in local bands, and worked in a variety of jobs before becoming a teacher [1] at Portland Primary School on Laird street, Birkenhead. I think this little book is a bit of a wonder. Deeply appealing to children of all ages, to say nothing of the adults out there, with so many uses, and so many applications. It reminds me of the old picture books by Bruno Munari that weren’t afraid to try new things with the picture book format." —Elizabeth Bird, School Library Journal