Holiday Gift Guide- Coloring Books!

Pippins, Andrea. I Love My Hair: A Coloring Book of Braids, Coils and Doodle Dos. 
November 10th 2015 by Schwartz & Wade
Copy provided by the publisher

When I was in kindergarten in 1970, I received a giant coloring book at our Christmas gift exchange. It may still be under my mattress. For years, I would haul it out and color a picture or two over winter break, carefully signing and dating each masterpiece. In middle school, the school store sold tag board folders that were shiny white with black and white line drawing that the cool kids would color with markers. I never wanted to spend the $1, so I don't have one to show you! At any rate, I wasn't at all surprised that adult coloring books are making the best seller lists! If I didn't spend every spare minute I have reading, I'd love to color pictures!

This beautiful volume of designs to color has a variety of hair designs to color, and is nicely multicultural in its range of hair depicted. What I loved was how detailed the pictures were, and how there are many fun elements, like flowers and words, included in the pictures. The spread of crowns and braids are probably my favorites. A nice set of colored pencils would probably be best for coloring in the small lines, but I used a fine point Sharpie on one picture and was nicely surprised to find that the paper is of such a quality that the marker didn't bleed across the line OR soak through the page. 

This is definitely not a book for children who don't have well-honed fine motor skills, but is great fun for older colorers. My only criticism is that some of the pictures cover two pages, and with the fold in the middle, it lessens the impact of the picture, especially if one wanted to remove a picture to hang on a wall!