by Lizzie Mary Cullen
Published by Penguin on June 16th 2016
Style: Interactive
Pages: 96
Format: Glue Binding
Goodreads
For the past few months, Lizzie has been travelling the world, exploring some of our planet's most beautiful landscapes and fascinating cities. Inspired by the places she discovered, she has created this stunning new colouring adventure.
The Magical Journey is Lizzie's most interactive and absorbing book yet - with different treasure hunts for each continent around the world.
This is an epic trip that will transport you from the depths of the Brazilian rainforest to the dizzying heights of the New Zealand mountains. Join Lizzie and faithful friend Paddy the Pug as they trek, fly, sail and swim through the wonders of the world, discovering hidden objects along the way.
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The Magical Journey Colouring Book Review
I have to say straight away…this is my favourite coloring book to date from this artist. I adore it! It is quirky, cute and curvy. The Magical Journey is the third coloring book for adults created by London artist, Lizzie Mary Cullen.
In this book, you will be taken on a journey around the world and you will have a few items to find along the way. Thankfully, these items are easy enough to find so I will play. Usually, I dislike interactive books, finding I have enough to worry about with the coloring component without adding a treasure hunt.
Cover & Layout
The cover of this book is gorgeous and very similar to other books produced by this artist. The Magical Journey measures 25cm x 25cm (approximately 9.8 in x 9.8 in). The cover has pre printing on it in green, pink and aqua which gives it a groovy retro vibe. There are some lovely silver star foil highlights to polish the look. The cover folds out and there is a beautiful inner cover and line work that you could color in (both front and back).
The title page is plain but there’s plenty of good illustrations to follow. A nice little Welcome from the artist will be a good spot to test your wet mediums (but a test page has also been included towards the rear of the book).
The Magical Journey – familiar style of art
I love the double page spread of the world that follows set in a detailed and quirky background. This book contains a table of contents which is a nice touch, considering it is focused on traveling. The countries that will be explored from the comfort of your home are London, South America, Japan, New Zealand, Australia and the USA. I really like that Mary has devoted a lot of attention to the types of places that she is including in this book. For instance, most travellers to Australia would not list Broken Hill and Kalgoorie in their top 5 places to holiday in but for travellers these cities are rich with character and charm.
A further page introduces us to the characters on this journey which consist of Lizzie and Paddy the Pug (who is very cute). I love the illustration of items that are needed on the epic journey.
Illustrations
After the ancillary pages above, comes the coloring book proper. We are immediately taken to London to the markets. We then journey to South America and on to Japan. Then, it’s time to take New Zealand by storm and cross on over to Australia before exploring the USA. Throughout the journey there are some snippets of commentary with Lizzie and Paddy making it cute and quirky. What I love about this book is the massive variety of illustrations. There are buildings, ships, florals, kiminos, food and florals all in the curvy style that Lizzie is known for.
The buildings throughout the book are all styled in the artist’s distinctive curvy, fish eye design. They are comforting because you know you have seen this style of art before but new and different because of the format of this book
The illustrations are all printed on both sides of the white paper and tend to fill the whole of the page. The paper quality is medium weight, smooth and good quality. The black, crisp line work makes the images very easy to see as does the medium line weight that has been used throughout. The book lays down flat extremely well which is handy as many illustrations cross both sides of the page.
Although Lizzie tends to use the whole of the page for her art, there are many large spaces within the elements on the page. This makes her work easier to color for those that have visual or motor impairments.
At the rear of the book we have a kiwi (native New Zealand bird) as a test page as well as the answers to the interactive aspect of the book.
The Magical Journey Colouring Book Video Review
Enjoy the video flip through review of this gorgeous coloring book below:
Where to Buy The Magical Journey Colouring Book
| Amazon US | Amazon UK | Amazon Canada | Book Depository |
Happy coloring x
Lea
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