Customer Reviews

Second Anti-Coloring Book

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I just love all of the books in this series by Susan Striker (with Edward Kimmel on a few of them). In college I learned about how coloring books are actually somewhat damaging to a child's creativity. When you give a child a coloring book, you aren't asking him to think or create - just kill time. But when you just give him inspiration in the form of these books, you're telling him that his imagination is important, and that you have faith in his abilities to draw and create.

Completing these pages doesn't only take imagination, either. Problem-solving skills are employed as children answer the questions posed on each page through their illustrations.

To children, none of this matters of course. For anyone who has ever laid down a blank piece of paper and wondered what they should draw, this is a welcome source of interesting ideas.

As a mother, I have used these books several times, and every time I get them out and let my kids look through them, they immediately become excited by the many possibilities and always find it difficult to narrow down which ones they will do. Furthermore, there is such a range of topics that any child is just about guaranteed to find something of interest. On one page, the creator is challenged to "Award Yourself a medal for what you know you do best", then on another page he or she is asked to "Construct a city on another planet" or illustrate, "What is your idea of Paradise?". All of these prompts also include some background to help get creative juices flowing.

I should also note that many of the prompts in the book can also easily lend themselves to be used as creative writing prompts. I highly recommend this or any book in this series to any teacher or parent.

I love the Anti-coloring book series.
Rather than simple pre-drawn shapes to fill in, like most coloring books, the anti-coloring book may have a scene with a big blank space, or half of a picture drawn, and the child has to use their imagination to draw something in the blank space.
The challenges are fun and keeps my daughter excited to see the next page. It's also really fun for me to see what she comes up with. It's a lot more fun and satisfying for both of us when she shows me a picture of a robot she designed and explains how it works as we both laugh and talk about it, than it is for her to fill in colors for a traditional coloring book. She takes a lot more pride in her creations with this book and has a lot more fun with it. She's also exercising a great deal of creativity, critical thinking, imagination and drawing skills, without even really knowing it. I would highly recommend this book to any parent to give their 6 to 11-12 year old.

These coloring books are really fun - outside the box. My son was 4.5 when we started one. I made comments on each page to remember what everything that he drew meant and also included his comments. Its neat to look back and see how his interests and mind is changing. I highly recommend this series.

This is a wonderful book for teachers. I like to use this book with my students because it lets them be creative and stretch their imagination.
I would recommend this book to any teacher who teaches grades K-6th.