74 Bird

The video and the photos (including colored designs) are all of the US version of this coloring book unless otherwise noted. I have also reviewed the UK version of the coloring book. I will provide a comparison of the two printings of the book at the end of this review.

I an a real fan of Millie Marotta’s natural world coloring books and have both of her previous coloring books: Animal Kingdom and Tropical World. In Wild Savannah, Ms. Marotta provides a view of animals from various grassland areas all over the world. This includes the traditional African wildlife but also animals of Northern Australian, South America, and even Asia. By taking this point of view, the coloring book is filled with diverse and interesting animals. I was pleasantly surprised by this as my first thought was that it would be more limited in scope.

As with her previous books, Wild Savannah is filled with animal designs including zebras, elephants, rhinoceros, lions, flamingos, various insects, hippopotamus, and much, much more. There are also many designs which include birds of all sorts. Of the 74 designs in the book, five of them are semi-duplicates of the opposite page. As with her other coloring books, Ms. Marotta has included a few of these duplicates which do not contain the high level of detail of their twin. This allows the doodle artist or the blending artist a canvas to make those designs their own.

I am including much more detail about the book below (including comparisons) but here is an overview of what I found in the book:

74 Animal, Insect, Bird, and Plant Designs
Printed on both sides of heavyweight white page
Sewn Binding
Designs merge into binding, including two-page spreads
Alcohol-based markers bleed through
Water-based markers and India ink pens leave shadows on back of page
Gel pens leave shadows on back of page
Coloring pencils work well but don’t blend as well as I would like

The book is in the larger square format at 9 7/8 x 9 7/8 x .5 inches. The book cover is very pretty. It has touches of color and gold foil on the front of the cover. You could certainly color the remainder of the design if you so choose. The inside of the cover is a slick and glossy white.

The designs are printed on both sides of white heavyweight, non-perforated pages. There are also 14 designs which spread across two pages. The pages in my book were aligned okay but not as well as my UK version. There are 60 single page designs. Some of the single page designs and all of the two page designs merge into the binding of the book. As the binding is sewn rather than glued, you can easily remove several pages at a time by snipping a few threads. I was able to break the spine and get the book to lay flat for ease of coloring.

I generally test many types of coloring medium (a list is included below) and this is what I discovered in testing this book:

All alcohol-based markers bleed through the paper easily. All water-based markers either bled through (especially Stabilo) or leave distinct shadows on the backside of the page. My Tombows did the best of the bunch but when I put a second coat on top of the first (as I would for blending) the shadows were quite noticeable. My Pitt India ink artist pens leave a color shadow. My various gel pens left a slight darkening on the backside of the page noticeable but I could not tell the color of each just that they were there.

My coloring pencils did the best of the various medium. They went on well and blended well. The soft pencils went on thick and dark but, across the board, didn’t blend as evenly as I would like. My hard lead pencils went on true to type and did not leave an indent at 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:

Alcohol-based markers Copic Sketch, Prismacolor double ended markers (brush and fine point), Sharpies (fine and ultra-fine) Bic Mark-its (fine and ultra-fine)

Waater-based markers Tombows dual end markers (brush and fine point), Stabilo 88, and Staedler triplus fineliners

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, Caran D’Ache Pablo Colored Pencils and Faber-Castell Polychromos

US to UK Comparison:

Here is my comparison between the US and UK version of the coloring book. I will also place this portion of my review in the comments section of my UK review of the coloring book.

I will include a couple of photos that show the difference in paper color and the color of the spines of both books. In both instances, the US version is at the top and the UK version is at the bottom.

There are some distinct differences between the two printings. I don’t think that they make a huge difference but I would like you to know what they are so you can decide for yourself which version works best for your needs.

Cover:

The UK version has fold out flaps at front and back with designs which can be colored. I really like when a publisher includes this feature. The US version does not have fold outs and the inside of the cover is glossy and slick white.

The cover art is the same with slightly different typeface and spacing used on both front and back. The spine on the US version is orange while the spine on the UK version is a light teal.

Size and Weight:

Both books measure the same size. They are 9 7/8 x 9 7/8 x .5 inches. The US version weighs 1.01 pounds and the UK version weights 1.07 pounds. I am guessing that the difference in weight is due to the fold-out cover on the UK version.

Paper, Binding, Print Quality:

The UK version is a cool white while the US version is a warmer white. The US paper is slick to the touch and the UK version has a little more tooth feel to it.

Both books have sewn bindings, however, the UK version is sewn in on a eight page fold while the US version is sewn in on a six page fold. My UK version of the book has a much better alignment on two page spreads than my US version. That may be simply true in my situation and other books may differ in this regards.

Both books have excellent print quality. They have the same designs at the same page in the book. A few of the US designs have been ever so slightly enlarged so that the crop at the edges shows less of the designs. It is limited to only a few designs and nothing essential is lost in those designs compared to the UK version.

Coloring Medium:

My various medium worked similarly with both books with the notable exception of soft lead colored pencils. Interestingly, the UK version (that feels to have more tooth to it) did not take the color as deeply as the US version. However, blending worked much better and more consistently with the UK version. The US book took deeper color with more coverage but when I blended it, I found that the color stayed mostly where I originally put it and blending was uneven because less of the color moved. It looked like I had a darker stain in the middle of my blend. For the most part, with the intricate details of these designs, I am less apt to do much blending; however, I wanted to mention it for those who do this technique.