22 Cute and Clever Animal Designs in circular Mandala style format

World’s Cutest Animal Coloring Book, The [US] (Lonely Planet Kids)

By: Lonely Planet Kids

Rating: 5 of 5

The title says it all these are some really cute animal designs. The artist, Lulu Mayo, has had several other animal books that are quite cute as well but focus on a single animal species. I was really pleased to see this new Lonely Planet offering had 22 different types of animals.

The designs are presented in a circular mandala style. They are detailed but intricate (i.e., no tiny little spots to color.) While the book is released in the Kids line, I think it works equally well for adults to color.
What is interesting about the presentation is that the facing page to each design is an already colored example. You can use it as a guide or merely enjoy how the design was colored by someone else as you pick and choose your own color scheme. It has the effect of making the designs printed one-sided (if you don’t care about ruining colored page.) That is what I will do but I will work this book from back to front so I can enjoy the picture while I am coloring.
In addition to the design pages, there is a map at the back of the book which shows where each animal can be found. There is also a couple of pages that give a small bit of information about each animal as well.
This is what I found while coloring in this book and testing the paper with my coloring medium:
22 Cute Animal designs presented in circular mandala form
Designs printed one side of page (with color version on facing page, I.e, back of the preceding page)
Paper is heavy weight, white, slight smooth and non-perforated
Sewn binding you can remove several pages in whole at a time by snipping a few threads
Book opens fairly flat for coloring by heavily creasing/breaking the spine
Alcohol-based markers bleed through the page. If you use this medium, it will ruin that colored design on the back of the page I suggest (and use) a blotter page when using this type of medium to keep ink from seeping into the next page. I like card stock for this purpose.
Water-based markers, India ink pens and gel pens did not bleed through or leave shadows on the back of the page.
Colored pencils work well with this paper. Even though the paper is slightly smooth to the touch, it still had enough tooth to grip pigment. I tested both oil and wax based pencils with good results for pigment lay down, layering the same color, layering multiple colors and blending using a pencil style blending stick.
As this is noted for children (though I think it works well for adults as well), I tested crayons as well. They work well with the paper but lacked the fine point needed for some of the detailed work.