Follow Here to Purchase Imagination Will Take You Everywhere (Doodle Art Alley Books) (Volume 1)

Publisher: Doodle Art Alley Books: Volume 1
Author: Samantha Snyder
ISBN: 978-0692444481

Many have doodled at one time or another.  Perhaps it was when they were talking on the phone, waiting for a doctor’s appointment, in a meeting, watching tv, in school, daydreaming etc.  In Imagination Will Take You Everywhere, author/artist Samantha Snyder offers fifty "doodle art" images on colouring tear-out pages of sayings and quotes from a variety of well-known writers that await the reader’s crayons, markers, pastels and pens to make the words come alive.

This book could be so much more had the author included an Introduction to the book, an explanation of the word ‘doodle', a description of how the book could be used, samples of a completed page where actual doodles could be added by the reader to the author’s provided colouring pages, and a connection between book title and book contents.

She could have included a section to explain the meaning of various colours, quotations and sayings could have been designed in ‘funky’ and fun lettering rather than the repetitive style used in the book.   A simple set of instructions explaining the various ways of sketching (i.e. heavy shading, crosshatching, tangling, etc) could have encouraged readers in their creation of multi-dimensional art.  An explanation of doodling could have noted that doodles are simply geometric shapes or patterns scribbled / drawn that are produced when one’s focus is ‘elsewhere’; that doodles can meander or be precise, be complex or childlike or abstract or be drawn; that doodles often have a life of their own - such as when an encircled word becomes transformed into a wheel, when punctuation becomes hearts or stars or flowers or arrows etc., when lines become curves and when letters bend to the left or the right side with some lines becoming large or squiggly or tiny.  

A paragraph or two at the beginning of the book could have helped the reader realize that right-brain-activity takes over when creativity of any kind emerges and that doodling and colouring are ‘creative’ activities.  And most importantly, the author could have assured readers that there is no “right or wrong” way to doodle or colour.   

But, the author did none of these.  If she had, an ordinary colouring book could have become a fun, interesting, informative and creatively-stimulating book.  

Perhaps the next set of books in the Doodle Art Alley series will not only provide readers with simple colouring pages but with creative possibilities where various media, doodling, tangling and colour can emerge, encouraging and stimulating the creative nature of the reader so that imagination will really take you everywhere.