Book Review
Fungi Fancy: Coloring Book
Here is one more for kids! (Kids of all ages.) I recently received a mushroom coloring book, published by artist Alison Neville. Her work varies widely including drawings on paper, dioramas, mixed media, and polymer clay sculpture (you can see more of it at her website alisondneville.com). Along with contemporary projects, she illustrates coloring books for adults (Fungi Fancy and Sacred Sloths), paints miniature pendants, and contributes miniature works to refurbished cigarette vending machines called art-o-mats. The only other coloring book I can think of seeing is Jeannette Bowers’s Mushrooms of the World (1984), with text by David Arora. The Bowers book has many really nice images of mushrooms for you to color—and has colored versions to give the budding artist an idea of what they should look like. Neville’s book puts a new spin on that as there are no color images to go on and she flat out states that her book represents “twenty-four mushrooms to color any way you like.” Coloring books get young mycophiles involved and are a great way to teach the importance of documentation and noticing details. With Fungi Fancy not only will you not be scolded if you don’t stay within your lines, but it matters not what colors you use!
— Review by Britt Bunyard
— Originally published in Fungi