Secret Garden: An Inky Treasure Hunt and Colouring Book: 1
£8.50£9.50 (-11%)
This interactive colouring book takes you on a ramble through a garden created in beautifully detailed pen–and–ink illustrations by Johanna Basford.
There are pictures to colour, mazes to solve, patterns to complete and lots of space for you to add your own inky drawings. Use felt tip pens to add a splash of colour or a black pen with a fine nib to create your own doodles and details.
Johanna Basford has sold over 21 million books worldwide. Secret Garden: An Inky Treasure Hunt and Colouring Book was her first book. It has been translated into over 44 languages.
‘Colouring in isn’t just for kids. These intricate, magical drawings from Secret Garden by Johanna Basford are just waiting to be brought to life.’ The Guardian
‘Joanna Basford’s Secret Garden is an ‘inky treasure hunt and colouring book’ filled with intricate drawings waiting to be brought to life. It’s the colouring–in book you wish you had the hand–eye coordination to do, aged two.’ The Independent
‘Prepare yourself to get lost in a magical world with this interactive activity book that takes you through a secret garden of incredible drawings by Johanna Basford.’ Buzzfeed
‘Coloring books for adults have been around for decades, but Basford’s success…has helped to create a massive new industry category.’ The New Yorker
Also available by Johanna Basford from Laurence King Publishing:
Enchanted Forest: An Inky Quest and Colouring Book (9781780674872)
Secret Garden: Journal (9781856699853)
Secret Garden:12 Notecards (9781856699471)
Enchanted Forest: Artist’s Edition (9781780677842)
Enchanted Forest: Journal (9781780679181)
Enchanted Forest: 12 Notecards (9781780677835)
Read more
Additional information
| Publisher | Laurence King Publishing, 1st edition (1 April 2013) |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Paperback | 96 pages |
| ISBN-10 | 9781780671062 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1780671062 |
| Dimensions | 25.08 x 1.27 x 25.08 cm |
by Bookworm
A lovely colouring book with beautiful intricate designs. Before I received it, I was worried about paper quality after reading lots of the reviews, so I was pleasantly surprised when it arrived. They may have changed the paper it is printed on as my copy of the Secret Garden contains nice paper which is actually whiter than the paper in my Animal Kingdom book (lots of reviews for Animal Kingdom state that the paper quality is amazing and white but mine is quite yellow so I think they have also changed that!), and is absolutely nothing like the paper in cheap colouring books. However, I will add that I tried the Staedtler fineliner pens (recommended by Johanna) on one of the first pages (with nothing on the other side) and most of them did show through even though I used a light hand – there’s no way I could use them in the main book as all the pages are double sided and the pictures on the other side would be ruined. This is disappointing as the introduction mentions that you can use felt pens to add a splash of colour. I’ve taken a point off as I do prefer the look of felt pens and would prefer it if the pictures were only printed on one side.
ETA: I received a 2014 reprint. I have now seen a copy of the 2015 reprint in a shop and the paper is much nicer again; slightly yellower but much thicker and would probably cope with fineliners. I’m disappointed that I didn’t get the latest version/ buy in store.
by Laddy
The level of detail & scale was a bit of a shock! Not sure I’ve managed to break out the 4mm nib felt pens – firmly stuck with 1mm fine liners! Pencil crayons also work well. Wax crayons or thick felt tips – nope!
The vast majority of the book is very very small scale intricate shapes – not for someone who struggles to stay inside the lines or has poor eyesight/ poor light (I will be buying a magnifying glass, my eyes are too old for the tiniest scale bits). That said, there’s a couple of pages which are large scale. And I really like that some themes are developed from small scale to bigger scale (like the fish in the pond, there’s a very symmetrical detailed bird’s eye view one with lots of fish, opposite an underwater with 2 large fish page). I like the contrast, it makes it all feel very fresh even after you’ve coloured them in.
There’s a Key to all the different little elements like insects & keys & treasure chest etc at the front telling you how many of each in the whole book and a Key at the back telling you how many of each element are in specfic pages. I particularly like that there’s a few mazes to colour in, and also designs where there’s a fully drawn bit that dwindles down to suggest where you might like to draw your own version in the huge blank spaces. The book works just as well if you only colour in what’s there because the design placing is very well done.
The whole book is beautifully thought out and the paper has a really nice feel to it – which has left me a bit confused because with the fine liners it’s almost like blotting paper – taking everything else into account, I’m really surprised you get show through from one side to the other (all pages are double sided with designs). If I hold the pen down that little bit too long, the paper sucks the ink up. There’s an enormous number of pages in there, superb value for money, but the designs are SO good that if it really bothered me that it leaked through, I wouldn’t be able to choose which to do and would have to buy 2 books!
I love the white card dust cover that is printed both sides – extra space to colour is always a bonus! The inner design is larger scale that the outer design. You could also colour the outside of the brown cover (with monochrome).
All in all probably the most exciting & fun colouring book I’ve ever seen. Really it gets 6 stars!
by Chloe
The cover and cover-sleeve can both be coloured in!
The drawings throughout are beautiful and though I was skeptical of colouring in books it’s the most wonderful thing to do for fun and calming down.
For those that can afford it I recommend pairing the purchase with the pack of 100 crayola super tips felt pens (chunky to allow for thick or thin lines) as there is a great range of greens which suit a nature themed book like this perfectly.
Plus, I hadn’t realised there are drawing prompts and puzzles/mazes too – so there’s a chance to design your own additions to the book. I’m going to try to draw them in with my own pen before colouring those bits
by Amazon Customer
Please note that this book has been reprinted a number of times. The version I bought on 15/5/15 has high-quality paper, and there is no trace of ink bleeding through to the other (printed) side of each page. Even IF you get a version with the thinner paper, there are more than forty pages, eighty sides of pictures to colour, so if you only coloured half of the designs, then at just under a tenner, each single-side design is costing you less that 25p. With the better quality paper, that drops to 12p per side.
What is great about this book is that Johanna gives you space to add your own inky drawings to hers – if you want to! One page will have a circular or square design in the centre, the opposite page will have the edges filled, with a matching circular or square white space in the middle. Some designs flow over two pages, with white space around the design for your own additions. What this does is allow you to leave that white space – it gives the designs room to breathe, while most colouring books fill each page, edge to edge, which makes them look a little chaotic. This white space, I find, makes this book even more relaxing to complete. Johanna adds typed suggestions to the incomplete pages, but even this is done in a sympathetic way, with old-style typeface, random letter sizes and the text flowing along the edge of the existing design. The text becomes part of the artwork, rather than having an ugly block of text in one corner.
The book is flowers, trees and animals – you’ll need plenty of shades of green! The basis is on reality – many of these books have the internal spaces of animals filled with a giddy mass of geometric lines and patterns, just to add complexity to the drawings. None of that here, thankfully.
If this is your first foray into the world of adult colouring book, I really can’t think of a better introduction.