In honor of the Burke’s first “coloring book,” created for a stress buster event the library is hosting for Union Theological students next week, I thought it would be nice to show off this sweet children’s coloring book from ca. 1920:

 

Each page offers a new image (x3) to be painted in with the way it should be painted in attached.  The image below shows what the backs of the pages look like.  Children could paint these in, then tear along the perforated edges to mail off as a post card.
My favorite aspect of this book are the instructions given at the end,”Read this before Painting the Pictures”:

Before going into great detail about how each of the different skin tones should be painted, it instructs the child to “Be sure not to begin painting before you have cleaned your paint-box.  To do this let just a trickle of water from the tap run on to your paints while you wash them carefully with your brush.  Then dab away the water with a rag, except when the paints have got hard and dry – these you can leave full of water to soak a bit.”  Just to give you the reader a little perspective below is an image of my daughter’s paints.

 

 

This was not quite the neat image of a paint box conjured when reading those instructions!

 

 

 

 

This children’s coloring book is part of the Mission Research Library pamphlets held by the Burke Library, many of which are fully digitized and available on the Internet Archive.

Creation of the Burke coloring book referenced in the very beginning was inspired by the inaugural #ColorOurCollections week (February 1-5) started this year by The New York Academy of Science Library.