Coloring Pages

This post over at ALSA blog is everything I feel about coloring pages! (Plus it comes with a comic!)

Last summer I had a family enraged that out usual coloring page table was not out. This family had just finished up attending one of my co-worker's amazing hands on programs for kids where they made a craft, did science experiments, and experience a mini planetarium show.
They bagered our teen voulteers to give their kids coloring pages. One of them actually gave the family a sheet from her own personal coloring book, which happen to a My Little Pony. This only pissed them off further because they had a girl and a boy and they demanded a coloring sheet for the boy as well.

I stepped in before they could harass the volunteers any further and explained we don't have the space for a coloring table in our small department because we have to make room for more activity spaces for our programs. I would be happy to find them some crayons and blank paper if they wanted to stay and draw. No they wanted to take them home. They felt entitled to have as many coloring sheets as they wanted. They left stating that the "downtown library has them and we'll just go there". I was left their fuming and tempting to shout out after them "Promise?!"

I have been interrupted by patrons tossing coloring pages at me saying there are no more copies of a certain one and, oh they need 4 of them for each of the grand-kids. I have people complain that I don't have worksheets or other coloring pages. I know the public library is suppose to offer our patrons as much as we can in way of services, but this feeling that they are entitled to free coloring book (not just a page but a whole stack of them) is ridiculous. Plus we print out enough coloring sheets to kill a small forest. It's soooo wasteful.

Kids need to draw. This is the one opportunity in their life were they get to create and be imaginative. Unless they enter into the creative field as a teenager or adult, most of them will never get that chance again. They probably won't pick up a crayon until they are old enough to have kids themselves, if they have kids.  Just imagine someone taking your crayons away in the 5th grade and saying " You're too big for crayons. Maybe you'll have a chance to use these again when you 30...maybe..."

I've been doing some art for summer reading and I experience co-workers looking over my shoulders and exclaimed "I'm so jealous. You are so talented. I wish I could draw like that." This puts me in a odd spot because I'm rather humble when it comes to my art (Really I'm my own worst critic) I thank them for their compliments but also point out. "I've been practicing. Don't feel bad about yourselves because we do different types of work. I'm no prodigy!"

I'm also of the optimistic mind that if you can write the alphabet; which is really a series of lines, curves and circles, you can teach yourself to draw! But most adults don't or they feel so bad about their experience with art as a child, that they have no drive to create later in life. My mother made time to sketch and try to take art classes but my father firmly stated that he was bad at art as a kid and his teachers let him know it! I can sympathized with any adult  who has taken the time to try and start a new hobby or practice only to be face with the horror that your first attempts "looks like a kid made it." They struggle and give up easily. Art is a cruel mistress.

Kids don't have that stigma (or shouldn't have it). Everyone draw or paints in their class. Everyone is on the same level. Everyone is having fun. As a student of the arts, I believe that assigning a grade to art project is a horrible idea! If you see the student as put in their best effort according to their present abilities, give them an A for crying out loud! Offer encouragement, advice and critic when necessary.

(Sorry this was a rant about coloring pages, but it turned into a jab my old art teachers...)

I do like coloring pages. I think the ones over at Dover Publications are excellent. Coloring pages are fun. I get that. But I also work in a library. To have some unwritten rule that I have to provide coloring page just grinds my gears, especially when you are surrounded by a treasure trove of imagination that I humbly refer to as the fiction section. My ire is not directed at the regulars who come grab a coloring sheet to take home with their stacks of books, or give one to their child to calm or distract them while they read. No, it for the people who take handfuls at a time. Who demanded I stop everything and make copies for them. For the people who are greedy. For the patrons who whine about broken crayons. (I'm not a store! Funding people!)  For the grandmother who scolded her young grandson that he has to learn to color things more "realistically". The kid in question was 4 years old!

So when the coloring table leaves our department to make room for chess boards, sensory bins and all the wonderful crafts and activities our staff has planned for summer, I will not miss it. We are a library, we caterer to experiences. We are more than just a building that houses a bunch of paper.

Color outside the lines people!