Author Archives: Iiiireader

Based on the title, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect given Tomoko Tashiro’s previous book was of fairy tales. It turns out that this is another book of mostly fairy tales. Some of the tales were unfamiliar to me but I loved the artwork regardless of the story. While there is duplication of some of the tales, the artwork is different no duplication of designs. There are 78 pages of designs with most of them spanning across two pages. The designs are intricately and exquisitely drawn and will require a small point coloring medium, a steady hand, good eyesight to color.

The tales included are: Thumbelina, The Frog Prince, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Real Princess (Princess and the Pea), Cinderella, Princess Minon-minette, The Fairies, The Mermaid, The Flying Trunk, The Moon Princess, Tanabata, Many of the words are in English (e.g. the introduction to the designs) along with Japanese. The explanation pages at the beginning and end of the book are in Japanese only.

The book has a removable dust cover. The inside of the dust cover is plain white and the actual book is teal blue with white line drawings on it which can be colored if you wish to do so. The book is printed on both sides of non-perforated paper. Many of the designs span across two pages and the designs merge into the binding. The binding is glued rather than sewn and you will lose portions of some of the designs if you cut the page to remove it from the book. I was not able to get the book to lay flat, so coloring into the binding edge will be problematic. As with her first book, if I could give this book a 4.5, I would do so because of the binding/printing issues. I always round up when I am faced with this issue, thus a 5 star rating.

All of my markers, both water-based and alcohol-based bled through this paper with the exception of the brush tip of my water-based TomBow dual end markers. The fine point edge did bleed through. My India ink artist pens did not bleed through. My gel pens did not bleed through but all of them required a much longer drying period than normal. I especially liked the smaller nib Uni-ball Signo (0.28 and 0.38) for the fine detail on this book. My coloring pencils worked well and performed as expected for the type of lead soft/hard. My soft lead pencils blended well and the hard lead pencils didn’t leave an indent on the back of the page.

These are the coloring medium that I use for testing. If there is something else you feel I should be testing, please let me know and I will see if I can add it to my growing pile:

Markers: 1) alcohol-based Copic Sketch, Prismacolor double ended markers (brush and fine point), Sharpies (fine and ultra-fine) Bic Mark-its (fine and ultra-fine) and 2) water-based Tombows dual end markers (brush and fine point), Stabilo 88, Staedler triplus fineliners, and Pentel markers

India Ink: Faber Castell PITT artist pens (brush tip)

Gel Pens: Sakura, Fiskars, Uni-ball Signo in the following sizes – 0.28/0.38/0.5/1.0 and Tekwriter

Coloring Pencils: Prismacolor Premier Soft Core, Derwent Colorsoft, Prismacolor Verithins, and Faber-Castel Polychromos