Coloring Your Prayers: An Inspirational Coloring Book for Making Dreams Come True [Hardcover]

Carolyn Manzi (Author)

Book Description

Giving adults the freedom to "play with art," this unusual coloring book explores creative self-expression as a pathway to meditation and prayer.

Remember the quiet meditative experience of time spent with coloring books when you were a child? Here's a way to replicate and deepen that experience. Coloring Your Prayers shows us how to get back in touch with our playfulness and prayerfulness by using crayons, paints, beads, or any objects we find appealing. It suggests ways of creating art to honor God and celebrate our spirit. It teaches how coloring can relax and free us to find our own intuitive process. Its inventive drawings and magical words become treasure maps for discovering our own divine nature.

In addition to fanciful illustrations to color, Carolyn Manzi provides an abundance of inspirational tips for praying passionately; choosing and using prayer beads; making prayer cards with personal daily affirmations; creating altars; designing prayer robes, scarves, and pillows; and hosting prayer parties. To enhance the creative mood, she offers a diverse discography of great music to color by that brings us into communion with our sacred selves.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Although the inner child is somewhat passe, quaint books to appease it continue to appear. One of the most playful is Carolyn Manzi's Coloring Your Prayers: An Inspirational Coloring Book for Making Dreams Come True. Manzi encourages adults to put their prayers in action, beginning with the visualization that comes with creative activities, such as artwork. While the point that many adults have lost the uninhibited creativity of childhood is well taken, and the book is downright fun, Manzi's path to spiritual growth is too vague to be truly helpful. (Harmony, $17.95 192p ISBN 0-609-60621-2; Sept.) ~ Gift book publisher J. Countryman taps into Americans' fascination with the afterlife in Snapshots of Heaven, an inspirational title from Joyce Vollmer Brown. The art features landscapes and cozy domestic scenes, while Brown's text tells us what we want to hearAfor example, we will be reunited with dear friends and family in heaven, our differences elided by an overarching love. Brown's sentiments and examples are strikingly similar to Elizabeth Phelps's 19th-century ruminations on heaven found in the Victorian classics The Gates Ajar and Beyond the Gates. All that's missing is the dog Phelps pictured, curled up on the front porch of one of heaven's tidy domiciles. ($9.99 128p ISBN 0-8499-5654-4; Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

This "coloring book for adults" is supposed to release the reader's inner child and cheer worn and weary grown-ups. Full of funny pictures and inspirational sayings, the book melds New Age language ("when we color, we let go and enter a deep state of relaxation") with a good wallop of pathos. After all, there's something kind of creepy about a coloring book that features a picture of two people hugging, the caption reading, "Don't engage in casual sex. It's so empty and lonesome. Love is what you're really looking for, isn't it?" Not to mention vapid sentiments like "Life is no fun when your pants are too tight."

But what else can one expect from "a coloring book for adults who want to make their dreams come true"? It's a kitschy prop for people who've never grown up at all. When the reader colors the pictures and peruses the sayings, the "miracle" of faith is supposed to do its magic. But what Manzi fails to understand is that real spirituality requires more discipline than just coloring within the lines. (Beliefnet, Sept. 2000) -- From Beliefnet

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Harmony; First Edition edition (September 12, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0609606212
• ISBN-13: 978-0609606216
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 8.7 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,363,813 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Loving "Coloring Your Prayers", October 19, 2000

By 

Darby Moynagh (Charlton Depot, MA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Coloring Your Prayers: An Inspirational Coloring Book for Making Dreams Come True (Hardcover)

When I saw the cover of this delightful and colorful book I knew that I was in for something magical. The words and drawings speak directly from the author's heart and open the door to the reader's intuitive world. "Coloring Your Prayers" is an imaginative journey to the world of believing in your most authentic and precious dreams and manifesting them through visualization, prayer and belief. I dusted off my crayons and began this journey and didn't want it to be over. I re-connected with an aspect of myself that had been buried, like a diamond waiting to be rediscovered. I can already see the tangible, positive effects of Ms. Manzi's work in my life. My creativity is soaring to new heights and I find that I view the world with new eyes and more love in my heart. Thank you, Carolyn Manzi, for blessing us with this gift of insight and light.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Did the Editor Really Read the Book????, April 3, 2001

By 

Kathleen M. Sears - See all my reviews

This review is from: Coloring Your Prayers: An Inspirational Coloring Book for Making Dreams Come True (Hardcover)

I read the Editorial review on Carolyn Manzis' wonderful book "Coloring Your Prayers" and will be eternally grateful it was before I read the Editorial Review. Did he (or she) truly read this book? if so, he (or she) just did not get it. Did he (or she) think the only exercise was to "color within the lines". Does this person know what "real spirituallity requires". The sad implication that Adults do not have dreams, visualize or pray and that the book was a "prop for people who've never grown up at all" is a sad insensitive commentary on life as I see it. I am 72, and continue to dream realizing spirituality is a journey that never ends. Thank you Carolyn Manzi for the aid of your wonderful, creative path for expanding our horizons.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Coloring Your Prayers, An Inspirational Coloring Book, November 10, 2000

By 

Trish Malanka (Salinas, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Coloring Your Prayers: An Inspirational Coloring Book for Making Dreams Come True (Hardcover)

I went to a book signing that was held in Pacific Grove, CA. It was so much fun because we actually got to participate, not just sit and listen to someone try to sell their book. I went home feeling VERY inspired and have gone on to finish a project that I had set aside for a long time. It was a very unique and personally impowering experience for me. I left there knowing in my heart that I do have the power to make my dreams my reality!Carolyn Manzi's book stirs you to the core of your soul, and inspires you to boundless limits. I highly recommend this book!