ANTI-COLOURING IN

Popped out to Borders and Waterstone's this morning to see what is available both colouring book wise - and science colouring books. I found nothing that involved science and colouring in - and there were very few straight forward colouring books.
What I did find a lot of were books for children which encouraged using their imagination. I remember loving these kinds of books as a child. A step forward from just colouring in.

This book 'The Anti-Colouring Book - Just add imagination' by Susan Striker and Edward Kimmel was first ever published in 1979 and goes out of it's way to tell you that it is NOT a colouring book. It comes with its own little quote at the beginning...

"If we pretend to respect the artist at all, we must allow ... freedom of choice ... Art derives a considerable part of its beneficial exercise from flying in the face of presumptions" Henry James, Author and Literary Critic

Ooo er!! Lets have a look...


'These people can't decide which hats to buy. Can you help them make up their minds?'

I really do love the idea of this kind of thing. Each page is kind of a mini brief with illustrated guidelines and you can build your project within it.
But what does it have against COLOURING??

Another similar book I found calls itself a 'colouring book', but also has the imagination element as you get to draw in your own heads, arms and legs...

ROSIE FLO'S HOLIDAY COLOURING BOOK






There's a really interesting piece of text on the 'Rosie Flo' website, about how she came to create such a concept and why...

It began when her daughters were small and they would demand her to draw for them. Roz (the creator) would mostly draw dresses, leaving space for her eldest daughter to fill in the heads, arms and legs. Her youngest daughter would simply love to colour it in. Roz was fascinated with how they both maintained such prolonged interest with this way of drawing and felt there must be other like minded girls around.

"In designing the books, I have paid attention to all things which irritated me as a child."...

• The paper quality is thick enough to avoid showing through or damaging the picture on the next page.
  
• It is sturdy enough to withstand a few journeys without falling apart and small enough to fit in a child's hand luggage.
  
• The lines are intentionally not too thick, as this makes it look like it is only for preschool children.
  

The age range is between around 4 to 12 and beyond.