The Remedy of Books

So, this is a bit of a departure from what I normally review, but there's been such a craze for adult coloring books lately I was happy for a chance to check it out. When I saw The Time Garden available on Blogging for Books I jumped to request it.

I have always found coloring to be a really relaxing activity. When I was a kid my nana used to have a stack of coloring books and a huge basket of crayons next to her couch. I remember flipping through the books, past her neatly colored-within-the-lines pages to whichever blank page took my fancy, and half coloring it before getting bored and moving to another page. She never seemed to mind that her grand kids messed up her coloring books. I wonder what she would have thought of intricate adult-geared books like this one...

The first thing that I noticed about this book was that it wasn't just coloring pages, it came with a story. The opening pages tell a story of a girl whose father brings home a strange clock. That night when the clock strikes midnight, the girl sees a tiny red-haired fairy winding the clock. The little fairy, startled by the girl, runs from her and ends up leading the girl on a magical adventure through many exotic worlds on the following pages.

The whimsical worlds the girl travels through really do spark the imagination and are very inviting. They're not only fun to look at, but the detail of the drawings leaves a lot of choices for colorers--these are not pictures where you want to stick with traditional colors for things.

Many of the pictures are spread across two pages making for stunning visuals (though also making it difficult to color into the spine).  One of my favorite spreads was of a giant owl flying through the night sky with a house on his back.

I've been using colored pencils in The Time Garden, and they have worked well as long as I keep my sharpener around for the many intricately small sections. The paper is thick enough that markers would probably also work, though I haven't tested that (yet). Traditional crayons are definitely a bad choice.

It's worth noting that though the word "garden" is in the title, the book is not set in a garden and only a few of the pages have garden-ish scenes. So don't choose this one if you're looking primarily for flowers and vines and trees.

All in all this book has been a joy to color so far, and I look forward to many hours filling in the details and bringing the adventurous heroine's magical journey to life.


*I received this book for free from Blogging for Books for this review.