Gearhead Mom

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Big Sibling Gift - Coloring Books

Posted by Missy W. @ 3:51 AM

I think a coloring book is a great thing to have in your hospital bag if your older kiddo wants to stick around and visit for a while but isn’t stoked to just stare into their new sibling’s eyes. Taro Gomi’s Doodles: A Really Giant Coloring and Doodling Book is one of my favorites.

And, dude, it is just so much more than a coloring book.

First of all, this book is huge; it looks more like a phone book than a coloring book, I mean, the damn thing weighs two pounds. I am so fond of this activity (it’s so much more than just a coloring book) because it’s so random. The pages are filled with challenges for your artist - two hand drawn blank faces and the direction on the top says, “Which one of them is laughing harder?” Or a picture with some wavy lines and a man in a hat with a dog in one corner, the caption says, “The sun is setting behind the mountains.” I like that it’s open ended; it doesn’t mean that your artist has to draw the sun. Two cinnamon rolls just chillin on a page, “Draw plates for these cinnamon rolls.” There’s also word searches, silly math equations or a suggestion to “Draw shadows cast by the sun.” All of the illustrations in the book are hand-drawn by Taro Gomi, which gives it much of its charm. His sense of humor leaps off the pages. As a music junkie, I happen to love the page that has two speakers on it and it asks, “What kind of music do you think is coming out of these speakers?” I am sure Sy would say The Beach Boys and I’m more inclined to think the White Stripes…

We have a copy but I don’t pull it out all that often for Sy. Mainly because she only gets about half the concepts in the book and she’d rather just draw on plain paper at this point. I think in another six months or a year, she’ll be amused by this book as well as understand it more. But that’s why I geek out about this so much, it pushes boundaries of something as traditional as a coloring book. I’m looking forward to Sy growing into more of the activities.

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