Cotsen Children’s Library

Really Big Coloring Books in St. Louis, Missouri aims to make your coloring book dreams come true. Its lines include LapTop Coloring Books (panoramic flip-top books 17 x 11 inches), Power Panel Coloring Books (8 x 11 inches), Travel Tablet Coloring Books (36 pages 5.5 x 8.5 inches), Promotional-Custom Coloring Books (8 pages with 4-color covers guaranteed in 30 days or less), and the Specialty Coloring Books, which in my opinion are highly collectible.

The Speciality Coloring Book line is topical, bi-partisan, patriotic, and not always politically correct. Since 1988, Really Big Coloring Books has produced pamphlets on Obama, Ted Cruz, 9/11, gun safety, coming out, international terrorism (among other things) and most recently at lightining speed, a “true to life graphic educational comic coloring book about the Coronavirus -COVID 19.”

Coronavirus Coloring & Activity Book. [St Louis, MO]: Really Big Coloring Books, Inc., c2020. (Cotsen)

The text covers the bases,including essential information about the virus, ground zero at Wuhan, China, correct hand washing techniques and other methods of prevention, a time line of the disease’s spread between December 2019 and February 26 2020, the United States government’s efforts, and how to stay well-informed as the disease spreads. The editorial team does a good job keeping it non-partisan and factual.

Coronavirus Coloring & Activity Book.

Because the publication is intended for all ages, there is a generous helping of generic “fun” but educational activities that can be done with pencil and paper. They seem very appropriate for passing time in the doctor’s waiting room. Maybe some physicians have stocked the magazine racks with copies.

Coronavirus Coloring & Activity Book.

Really Big Coloring Books, as the preceding publication shows, can be an excellent citizen as a publisher. There are other times when the firm goes unapologeticaly rogue, as in this 2019 extravaganza on North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un. Nobody can complain that It wasn’t clearly labeled as inappropriate for persons with crayons under the age of eighteen years. The staff cartoonists seems to have relished this particular assignment because the graphics are pretty inspired for a coloring book.

The Kim Jong-un I’m Begging the World to Kick my Ass Fun Activity Coloring Book. [St. Louis, MO]: Really Big Coloring Books, Inc., c2019. (Cotsen)

The maze and connect-the-dots are the most light-hearted of all the fun activities, although others are cruder. Dennis Rodman has to take his licks.

The Kim Jong-un.

The back cover states emphatically that Really Big Coloring Books has no animus against the North Korean people, just the “delusional tyrant who truly believes he is a God amongst humans” who makes their lives miserable.

The Kim Jong-un.

Are we ready to start living in less interesting times???????

This week we’ve paid tribute to poets of the rude and rumbustious and the sly and snide but we’ll mark the end of Children’s Book Week with the quiet, deceptively simple verse of Christina Rossetti. Her Sing-Song is perhaps the greatest tribute any writer has paid to the English nursery rhyme. Almost every type of traditional children’s verse Iona and Peter Opie catalogued in the Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes has its counterpart in Sing-Song, but delicately transformed into something entirely original, accompanied by Arthur Hughs’ tender, sharply observed illustrations.

She makes rhymes for mothers to love their little ones:

My baby has a mottled fist;

My baby has a neck in creases;

My baby kisses and is kissed

For he’s the very thing for kisses.

She gives a mother words when cuddles are not in order– for a little while:

Seldom “can’t,”

Seldom “don’t;”

Never “shan’t,”

Never ‘won’t.”

She introduces the rigorous mysteries of nonsense:

A city plum is not a plum;

A dumb-bell is no bell, though dumb;

A statesman’s rat is not a rat;

A sailor’s cat is not a cat;

A soldier’s frog is not a frog;

A captain’s log is not a log.

She reminds little rough hands to be gentle:

Hurt no living thing,

Ladybird, nor butterfly,

Nor moth with dusty wing,

Nor cricket chirping cheerily,

Nor grasshopper so light of leap,

Nor dancing gnat, nor beetle fat,

Nor harmless worms that creep.

Hear what the poem sounds like read aloud.

She glories in the colors:

What is pink? a rose is pink

By the fountain’s brink.

What is red? a poppy’s red

In its barley bed.

What is blue? the sky is blue

Where the clouds float thro’.

What is white? a swan is white

Sailing in the light.

What is yellow? pears are yellow,

Rich and ripe and mellow.

Wnat is green? the grass is green,

With small flowers between.

What is violet? clouds are violet

In the summer twilight.

What is orange? why an orange,

Just an orange!

And closing with the poem set to music and sung.

Cotsen Children’s Library

Princeton University

Really Big Coloring Books: “You Chose the Topic, We Make Your Book”

Christina Rossetti’s “Nursery Rhymes”