iiiiReader Book Reviews

Serene Little Village

By: Julia Rivers

Rating: 5 of 5

I love little villages and I especially love little villages filled with cute animals dressed up in their Sunday best. This coloring book is one of the cutest I have seen in this style. The designs are detailed with lots of fun elements to color. The animals are tricked out in human garb and we see them as they go about their day in this hidden vale.

There are some areas with smaller than average elements to color but not what I would consider too difficult or hard to color.

This book is published under the imprint name of Julia Rivers but unlike many of their other books, this one does not contain the name of the actual artist(s) responsible for the book. I can only hope that the publisher will encourage that the person(s) responsible for it and we will see new books in the future.

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I was really excited to see a Greek Mythology coloring book by Jade Summer as I had really enjoyed the Norse one they released last year. I am also half Greek, so I have grown up with the stories of these myths. I do like the book but nearly as well as the Norse book. The reason is quite simple – the females in the Norse book are featured as quite strong as well as beautiful. The Greek females are lovely but have the look of a pin-up more than a fierce god (with the exception of Athen.) I would have liked to have seen some muscle tone on those arms and some of the striking poses of the Norse women.

The designs have some detail but then again, not as much as the Norse one. The backgrounds are sometimes a few mere lines while others have a little more to them.

While you can have access to .PDFs when you purchase this book, my review is based on the book as it is received from Amazon. That way you will know what the pages look like and how they accept color. I like that the publisher provides the digital version as well so you can choose the paper you wish to use and/or to color the pictures as many times as you choose.

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This is the second coloring book by Molly Hashimoto released by Pomegranate. While the animals are still predominantly birds, there are other animals as well, including a love fox that will be my first project in this book. The drawings are uncolored block prints which have big, bold black lines.

Included on the inside of the front and back covers are full color thumbnails of all of the original artwork. The title of each design is listed both on the contents page at the beginning of the book as well as the design page itself. The contents page also gives the size of the original artwork, the medium in which it was done and also the date it was finished.

The designs are easy to color but with a heavy use of black which is very prominent due to the nature of block prints. I used to use my markers for this type of design but as I am unable (due to health reasons) to use alcohol or solvent based markers for an extended length of time), I will be using my Tombow water-based pens and my coloring pencils to color these designs. With coloring pencils, I have to take care to not color over the black as the pencils have a tendency to look gray on top of the heavy black.

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Happy Christmas in July!

The designs in this book are inspired by actual greeting cards. Marty Noble is the illustrator in the book and has interpreted the greeting cards into line art form. The designs are definitely fun and evoke a vintage style Christmas of a kinder and gentler time. There are sweet faced children galore and a variety of images of fun Santa.

The designs are not overly detailed. Some of more simple than others. There are a few that contain more detail and should take longer for a colorist to complete.

If you decide to purchase this book on Amazon, be sure that you are seeing the cover that shows in this review. Two reasons for that caveat. At the time I write this review, Amazon has combined multiple Marty Noble books together for review and purchase. There isn’t any rhyme or reason for that, just that they did.

I tried working with Amazon to get the review pulled apart but it appears that buy-in for splitting improperly combined reviews are spread across their business and some of those groups are resistant to change – even when it is amply merited.

Frankly, after spending several months and lots of my time tracking down which books (and there are many more than this) are improperly combined, I decided that Amazon can have their PAID employees do this and not a customer who is simply trying to help.

The other reason I mention the cover is that Dover has done an earlier version of this book that is printed on both sides of the page. As coloring medium seeps through their paper, I think having the one side designs makes a lot more sense.

I’ve noticed that the paper quality seems to change quite frequently on the Creative Haven line. Because of that, if you buy one of their coloring books, it may be slightly smooth or slightly rough depending on when and where it was printed. I’ve found that coloring medium, including pencils, work similarly with both slightly rough and slightly smooth paper from Creative Haven. In this case, my coloring book pages are slightly rough.

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Quality comes at a premium and this is one of the nicest quality coloring books that I own. Not only are the pages larger than most at 11 x 14 inches, the paper used is #80 professional grade paper.

And that is just the nuts and bolts of the book. What is more impressive, to me, is the artwork on each page. When I first received the book, I thought that it would be filled with pages of mermaids. While there are a few of those designs, the vast majority of the designs are of wildly varying sea creatures. Or I should say, the artist’s interpretation of those sea creatures.

From Dog Fish and CatFish to Sea Unicorns and Sea Monkeys to Puffer-up Fish and even the cutest little oysters I have ever seen, the artist has re-interpreted the world of undersea creatures.

The book is a premium one and, if you enjoy the artwork, it makes all the difference. The pages are set up to be framed easily with the pages being perforated for easy removal.

The designs are detailed and some have some and intricate areas to color. There is abundant shading using crosshatch on some designs – not quite grayscale coloring but definitely more than a simple line drawing.

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This is the second coloring book I have by artist Chinthaka Herath. The focus is on the female form along with beautiful flowers and animals. As much as I enjoyed the first coloring book by this artist, I am liking this one even more. The females have a strong look to them, kind of like a crusading spirit which appeals to me.

There are flowers and jewels and other adornment but, you somehow know that the women in these images are the important part. They stand strong and will continue to stand. One of my favorite images is of a woman in armor with a broadsword.

The designs have a nice level of detail. Most have background of a sort included. While there are some intricate areas to color, I don’t consider the book to be a difficult one or one which will tax the eyes or force you to use tiny coloring medium.

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This is the second Nice Little Town to focus on the cute abodes of mice. This first book showed houses which were more in line with traditional cottage forest homes – cute and vintage looking.

With this little town, as with all the others, the artist switches things up. These mice have a more modern look to the. They are longer and lankier and wear clothes that might look a little more in line with our times.

The mice are having fun. Not only are they out and about in the town, they are at the library or getting a quick tan in the town center. Many of the houses have a theme included rather than a just a change of colors.

These last two mouse house coloring books tickle my fancy. The others houses in the series are set up for people but I wonder if there might someday be birdhouses or houses for trolls or even for bunny rabbits.

Really, the choice can be endless if the artist chooses to explore the avenues available.

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I’m both a fan of this series (which up to now, has been illustrated by Sarah Yoon) and of the artist team Good Wives and Warriors who are the illustrators of this third book in the series.

In this book, the continuous page format continues and the trip is across the earth (and back) rather than under the sea or up to the moon.

While the format is familiar the artwork is straight up Good Wives and Warriors. The level of detail is racheted up and style is a little more elegant than flat out cartoon-like and that is what makes this book my favorite in the series. My husband and I share the other books in the series but this one is all for me.

In this book, the background is pre-colored in a white to increasingly deeper blue as you head further into the book. The actual designs are black lines on white. I found that the pages are a little to maneuver unless you have a really big area in which you color. I found that folding the pages the opposite direction from they way they came also helped keep the fold-out manageable.

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