Doodle Me, Do! My Beastly Book of Hilarious Heroes by Vincent Boudgourd

MEET THE HILARIOUS HEROES!

THEY'RE THE ENEMIES OF EVIL! THE PROTECTORS OF THE PEOPLE!

TOO BAD THEY'RE ALSO A BUNCH OF SCAREDY CATS, SHOW OFFS, AND CLUMSY SLEEPYHEADS.

IN OTHER WORDS, THEY REALLY NEED YOUR HELP!

GRAB YOUR OWN GADGETS OF JUSTICE AND WHIP THESE HEROES INTO SHAPE!

Long, dreary winter days lie ahead, and kids need a stock of paper-and-pencil fun to tide them over long stormy afternoons, long car rides, and long waits at the dentist's office. Vincent Boudgourd's My Beastly Book of Hilarious Heroes: 150 Ways to Doodle, Scribble, Color and Draw (Owlkids, 201l) is ready for a heroic rescue for just such moments. In generous-sized paperbound format, this book, which boasts "150 ways to doodle, scribble, color, and draw," is actually open-ended enough in its prompts to provide even more things to do, and just a little judicious use of the home scanner, copier, and printer can actually multiply the fun and give young artists a chance to try out different ideas from the same page.

Some instructions, such as "Help Super-Invisible disappear by coloring this page black" could be accomplished by preschoolers with only a black crayon or #2 pencil. Others, such as "Change this ordinary family into a family of heroes. or"Draw what you think the evil villain the BIG CHEESE and his partner MILK SHAKE look like" will challenge older kids to let their imaginations have sway. Some pages provide fun practice for skills such as connect-the-dot activities, mazes ("Can the bad guy escape through the web of the Web Master?"), finding differences, and cutting, coloring, and pasting--superhero door hangers for the artist's bedroom or a postcard of the well-known kid superhero "Super Persuader" in which the young artist adds his own headshot, cuts out the card, writes a message, and addresses to his parents.

This latest book of doodle activities joins its companion titles from Owlkids Books, My Beastly Book of Twisted Tales: 150 Ways to Doodle, Scribble, Color and Draw My Beastly Book of Monsters: 150 Ways to Doodle, Scribble, Color and Draw and My Beastly Book of Silly Things: 150 Ways to Doodle, Scribble, Color and Draw, all ways to spark creativity and encourage skills in an easily tote-able format. Pair these with a spare pack of washable markers, colored pencils, or crayons for a stocking stuffer, or squirrel them away in the car or activity shelf at home for those moments when a little silly fun is just the right anecdote for the winter blahs.