The Big Wide Welcome Art and Activity Book

Christmas break. Break for whom, exactly? The kids are not in school and used to an entire day of structured activities. Boredom abounds. This year, my wife and I decided to do an extended Christmas. We put up the Christmas tree the weekend that the school break began and every morning under the tree my kids (ages 5 and 3) would have one present each to unwrap. Most of these presents were small things—candy they didn’t normally have, bubbles, ingredients to a food they could help make, and so on. And, of course, books. I’ve long been a fan of ...The Good Book Company’s children’s books and their additions of colouring/activity books gave us several days of fun.

The Big Wide Welcome colouring and activity book is meant to accompany Trillia Newbell’s book of the same name in the Tales That Tell The Truth series. It takes the words of the book to recreate the story; recreates some of the illustrations as coloring pages; and inserts some mazes, word searches, and matching games. It’s a wonderful accompaniment to the main book, allowing your child a little more freedom to play roughly with the physical book.

If you’re like me, there are some children’s books you just let your child have and you understand that they’re going to have a limited shelf life. Pages will get torn. Perhaps eaten. You never know. Other children’s books, the ones you really like, come down from the tall shelves for supervised reading time only. They’re the books you want to last forever. Tales That Tell The Truth is one such series. By creating a more-disposable activity book, The Good Book Company is allowing me to have the best of both worlds. My kids can have a version of the story to color in, to take to their rooms, to engage with physically. And I can have a version to read to them over and over again and keep in good condition. It’s a winning concept for sure.