Daily Archives: September 16, 2016

America’s Favorite Birds: 40 Beautiful Birds to Color

By: Myoko Chu

Rating: 5 of 5

This is a beautiful coloring book which focuses on 40 American birds. The designs have a nice level of detail and the details look more like feathers to me than simply doodle designs which is unusual compared to most the other bird coloring books I own. The book is separated into seasons so you will know what time of year to be looking for each birds. There is also information about how to learn more about birds in general at the front of the book. I’ll list the birds included in the comments section at the end of this review for anyone interested.

The designs are printed well with nice dark lines and some background as well. The information about each bird is on the back of the page opposite the coloring design. While I really appreciate having the information, I wish it had been printed on the back of the design page so if I chose to remove it from the book, the design and information would stay together.

I, personally, do not plan to remove pages as it will disrupt the continuity of the information about the bird and then the picture. This book is quite beautiful and well published and can and will be a coffee table book for my guests to enjoy. Quite often, I will only put out books once I have finished coloring them; however, the wealth of information and pictures in this book is great as-is and I will leave it out even in the midst of my coloring in it.

The cover is quite pretty with green foil accents. It is attached and both front and back covers fold out to great information. On the inside of the front cover, there are small thumbnails of the actual designs with the page number at which you can find it (a visual table of contents.) The back page folds out to color photographs of each bird (though not the one on which the design is based) so you can see the colors of the bird to inspire you.

This is what I experienced while coloring in this book and testing my coloring medium on the pages.

40 American Bird Designs with backgrounds

Designs Printed on one side of page with information summary and thumbnails printed on the back of the page.

Paper is heavyweight, white, slightly smooth and perforated

Sewn binding

Alcohol-based markers bleed through the paper.

Water-based markers, India ink pens and gel pens did not bleed through the page.

Colored pencils worked well with the paper. It has a slight amount of tooth and was able to grab pigment well. I tested both oil and wax based pencils and was able to get good color by layering multiple coats of the same color, also layered different colors, and blended easily using a blender stick.