Frequently Asked Questions About First Coloring Books

In three ways you can check without taking our word for it.

All 111 drawings are hand drawn by illustrators, not assembled from existing stock sets.

Customer ratings: five out of five from nineteen ratings on the English edition, four point nine from twenty-six on the Spanish edition.

Readers' Favorite, an independent review site, gave the book five stars. The review is open, signed with the reviewer's name, and published on their site rather than ours.

There is a fourth thing that is rarely said out loud: we state plainly who the book is wrong for. If a child already holds a pencil with their fingers and colors small details without straying, they need a different book, and we say so.

Round numbers look good on a cover. We kept the drawings that passed the check: simple shape, drawing that fills the sheet, animal with a friendly face. That came to 111. We did not drop eleven of them to make the number tidy.

By people. All 111 are hand drawn by professional illustrators, and that is recorded in the publisher's data.

Yes. Once a child starts staying inside the outline with confidence, step-by-step drawing books suit them: there the child draws rather than fills in something already made. The publisher issues those, and they are at magicofdiscoveries.com. The sign that the moment has come: the child finishes a page without straying and asks for something harder.

If the younger one is between one and three and the older is four or five, one book covers both, though differently. The younger colors the whole drawing; the older colors the word, invents a background, or uses several colors. If the older child is six or more, they need their own book: this one will feel too easy.

There is no need. The book starts to matter when a child leaves marks on paper on purpose, not when they only bang the crayon about. That usually happens between twelve and eighteen months. Bought earlier, the book will most likely sit and wait a while.

Start with the pages. This site has ten pages from the book that can be downloaded and printed free, with no email and no sign up. Print one, hand your child a crayon, and within a few minutes you will know whether this kind of page suits them. If it does, the book gives you another hundred and one of the same kind.

Yes, in three ways. The site has a video where the whole book is flipped through with no editing: cover, back cover, and page after page in order. Twenty pages are also published as they look in the book, along with the list of all 111 drawings by theme. And ten pages can be downloaded and printed.

Yes. Each drawing sits in the center of the page rather than against the spine. Nothing gets in the way of the left hand and the spine does not press on the wrist. No separate edition for left-handed children is needed.

Tearing paper at this age is normal: the child is working out what paper does. The simplest fix is to cut the page out in advance and hand it over loose. Then what gets torn is one drawing, not the whole book. One-sided printing means any page can be cut out without losing the drawing on the back.

Usually closer to two, when the mouth stops being the main way of getting to know an object. Until then, use non-toxic crayons suited to the child's age according to the maker's guidance, and stay beside them rather than in the next room.

Do not insist. A refusal usually means the task is not within reach yet or the moment is wrong. Put the book away and offer it again a few days later. It helps to start yourself: sit down and color your own page in silence, without inviting the child. Children join an activity far more readily than they answer a request.

You can offer, but do not push. Choosing a single color at this age does not show a lack of imagination, it shows the child is busy with something else: learning to move their hand. In time they will most likely start reaching for more colors, usually closer to three.

No, the word is printed in large letters for exactly that: the child colors them just like the drawing. Tracing and filling them in is a first meeting with the shape of letters. The order does not matter: word first, drawing after, or only the word.

Say them, but do not test. The difference matters. Mentioning calmly which color you are using is fine. Asking which color it is and waiting for the right answer is not: the activity turns into an exam and the child leaves. The same goes for the names of the animals.

No. A finished example sets a bar the child cannot reach, and that is the quickest way to put them off. Coloring at this age is not about matching a model, it is about moving the hand and seeing the mark it leaves.

Do color, but beside them and on your own page. The request usually means the child wants your company, not a finished result. If they insist you color theirs, fill in a small patch and hand the crayon back.

Often it comes down to the setting. At daycare it is a shared activity: everyone is at the table doing the same thing. At home the child is alone at the table and the adult is busy elsewhere. Try sitting down beside them with a page of your own.

When the child has slept and is not hungry. Usually that means the morning. In the evening, tired after daycare, a child drops the page within a minute, and that is about tiredness rather than the book.

At a table, if their feet reach something to rest on. With feet dangling the body is busy keeping balance and less attention is left for the hand. The floor works too if the child lies on their stomach propped on their elbows. What does not work is coloring on an adult's lap: the hand has nothing to rest on.

Many people cut them out, write the date on them and keep them in a folder. Six months later you can see how the stroke has changed, and it is more interesting than it sounds. One-sided printing means a page can be cut out without losing the drawing on the back.

The book is glued, and pulling pages out sharply spreads the block. Cutting is better: hold a ruler against the spine and run a craft knife along it. If the book travels, cut a few sheets out in advance and take those.

Yes, and it is one of the reasons the book gets bought. Crayons are better in a car: with any movement of the car a marker can slip and mark the seat. Take a few cut-out sheets and a stiff folder underneath instead of a table.

As many as the child wants. Some do half a page at a time, others five in a row. One page a week is normal too. There are no right numbers here, and comparing with other children serves no purpose.

The drawings are the same, all 111. The difference is that you print the file yourself, at home or at a print shop, and you can print it as many times as you like. The paperback is printed and shipped by Amazon. The Russian edition exists only as a file: Amazon does not print books in Russian.

Yes. The file is bought once and printed as many times as your family needs. A print shop will run it on heavier paper than a home printer, and the result holds up better.

No. All the drawings are black outlines on white. An ordinary black and white printer is entirely enough.

Yes, and that is the main advantage of the file. A favorite animal can be printed twenty times over. And if a page gets spoiled, you simply print it again.

The link arrives by email right after payment. If it does not appear, check the spam folder: messages with links and attachments often land there.

The one you speak at home with your child. The drawings in the English and Spanish editions are the same; only the word underneath changes. If both languages matter in your family, some families buy both editions: the drawing is familiar, the word is different, and the child notices the difference on their own.

The word under each drawing is printed in large letters that a child colors just like the drawing, tracing their shape by hand. We are not claiming this will make a child read: it is simply a first look at what letters are shaped like.

At the moment the book comes out in English and Spanish in print, and in Russian as a printable file. It is too early to say anything about other languages.

Yes. When you place the order on Amazon you enter the recipient's address instead of your own, and gift wrapping and a short note are offered right there.

The book is made for the whole span from one to three rather than for one particular age. A note only needs to say that it is a first coloring book, with large drawings and a thick outline, and that it can be started right away.

Through an Amazon Business account. It is a free type of account for organizations. It provides invoices for bookkeeping, payment under the organization's details, and several people on one order. You open it on the Amazon Business site.

Yes. An Amazon Business account issues an invoice for every order. If the organization is exempt from sales tax, Amazon runs a separate tax exemption program: the certificate is uploaded once, and after that the tax is not applied to qualifying purchases. The conditions and the list of documents are on that program's page.

Discounts on the book are not ours to give. The price of the paperback is set by Amazon, which also prints it, and there is no markup for quantity there: ten books cost what ten books cost. Amazon Business sometimes has its own volume offers, and those show up in the order itself.

The book is printed when it is ordered rather than kept in stock, so printing comes first and shipping after. The exact timing is shown by Amazon at checkout, and that is the figure to go by: it depends on the country, the quantity and the shipping method chosen.

Yes. They are two different books, each with its own number, and both editions can go into the same cart. How Amazon splits the shipments is up to Amazon: they may arrive together or separately.

The drawings are the same in both editions and only the word underneath changes. So the books can be handed out by each family's language while the activity stays shared: every child has the same pictures in front of them. Some groups buy several copies of each edition and rotate them.

In our orders the Spanish edition does often go in large quantities. Why exactly, we do not know: sales data does not say who is buying or what for, and any explanation would be a guess on our part. What is certain is that the Spanish edition exists as a book of its own, with the same 111 drawings, and can be ordered in the same quantities as the English one.

The book is made for the one to three age range and for the first stage of drawing, when a child is only learning to leave marks on paper. To that span it does correspond. We are not going to claim it meets the requirements of any particular program: those differ from program to program, and the person running it should decide. The site has separate pages for people buying the book for work.

Yes. Magic of Discoveries publishes step-by-step drawing books for older children and worksheets for the classroom. The book catalogue is at magicofdiscoveries.com, and the worksheets are in the publisher's store on Teachers Pay Teachers.

The paperback is sold on Amazon in nine countries: the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Japan and Australia. The printable file is bought in our shop and is available from anywhere.

It does not have to come from there. Amazon prints its books on demand across a network of printing sites in several countries and works with the one nearest the buyer, so an order placed on a European Amazon is filled from Europe and arrives as an ordinary delivery rather than an international parcel. The price is shown in local currency. The exact timing is shown by Amazon at checkout.

The book is published through Amazon's publishing service, and that same service passes it on through its distributors. That is how it reaches other shops and library catalogues. The official page for the book, however, is a single one, on Amazon, and that is where the buy buttons on this site lead.

The site is run by Magic of Discoveries LLC, a children's book publisher in Miami, Florida. The book discussed here is ours: the English edition carries the number 978-1-963328-27-1 and the Spanish edition 978-1-963328-20-2. Both are listed in Wikidata, the international knowledge base, as editions in their own right.

Everything we state about a child's age rests on public sources: the CDC, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the National Library of Medicine's reference work. The links sit on the pages where those statements are made, and anyone can open them and check.

We are a publisher and we sell a book. The reference part of the site, the picker, and the ten free printable pages exist so that a parent can work things out and try before buying rather than after. There is no charge for using the site, we do not ask for an email address, and there are no ads.