When it comes to kids and coloring books I've found that they either love them or hate them so when I discovered the incredible line of Dover Stained Glass books, I wasted no time in ordering some that I thought Annabelle would like. Since she is into fairies and ballet, they were the most obvious choices but to get free shipping on these [thanks to a companion website offer] I had to order at least twenty dollars and considering that most of these are $1.50 a piece, I ended up getting a lot of different ones. I was impressed with the designs in this book but Annabelle looked at it and shrugged her shoulders. She wanted something that was more like a traditional coloring book than something that had basic images. Seeing that she was a little less than interested in these I sat down with her and colored some then hung them up on the window; that really made all the difference in the world. She's colored these types of books before but nothing in the fairy realm. When she saw how awesome they looked against the window, she really changed her tune about these.

Dover Publication Fairies Stained Glass Coloring Book

This is part of a huge stained glass series that Dover has released over the past three years; most of them are considered 'pocket books' because of their size. This one is the usual four by six size and has a total of eight images to color. If you want to enlarge them you can but you won’t get the same type of translucent image from it unless you use something really thin like vellum and that can be tricky to run through a copy machine or printer. I did try to blow some of them up so she could have larger ones to color but once you get over 300% the design starts to break up a little and you have to fill in the broken lines then make another copy. This isn't a big deal but if you are looking for high quality stuff, you might be a little disappointed with this. These are designed to be stained glass images, not something with a tremendous amount of detail.

The eight images in the book are nicely drawn and have just the right amount of detail to be able to pull off the scene without there being so much that it looks cluttered. One of my favorites is a fairy sitting on the top of a toadstool; it looks a lot like a puzzle that I bought for Annabelle so we did it in the same colors and taped it on the lampshade of the light in her room. Another one that I really liked was the fairy playing in the flowers; there are a couple different scenes of that so if you don't like one of them, chances are you will like the other. There are a couple that just the fairies just posing but they look way too much like Tinkerbelle for my taste. Out of all of them there are only a couple that I thought were flat out silly; the one on the cover of the fairy with the fiddle or what ever stringed instrument that is supposed to be and the one that is bending over. Overall the designs are nice but as I said, if you are looking for something that is of high quality, you might be a little disappointed with what this offers.

These books are published for the younger crowd; Dover lists it for five to ten year olds but that all depends on your child. The pages are perforated so getting them out of the book is easy but that doesn't seem to be the case with all of the books in this series; some have the perforated pages and some don't. You won't know which ones do and which ones don't until you buy them but if you can get them in a store, you can check them out before you buy them. The small pocket sized books sell for about $1.50 a piece but you can get them on sale from time to time for about a dollar, less if they are seasonal items that didn’t sell well. To me they are worth it because of the quality of the paper that they are printed on and what they contain but they are on the small side so don't expect to get a full sized coloring book in the mail if you order from the website.

The Bottom Line

The drawings in this coloring book are on par with the others in the stained glass series so if you have seen any of those, you will know what to expect from this one. They are inexpensive and make for great projects for younger kids but I can't see many over the age of six or seven getting into these unless they really like coloring and using their imagination. You can use markers or crayons on these but to get the best results you are going to have to keep putting it up to the light to make sure that there aren't any blank spots or areas that need to be touched up. As long as you go into this knowing that it isn't a standard color book chances are you will really like the designs that are in it.


As always, thanks for the visit…

~^V^~ Freak ~^V^~

© 2007 Freak369


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Recommended: Yes