Tropical Wonderland by Millie Marotta

7/7/2015

Tropical Wonderland is the follow up to Millie's hugely successful debut colouring book, Animal Kingdom, which flew off the shelves & sold over 500,000 copies worldwide. So, does her second book live up to the quality and beauty of her first? Yes! Honestly I didn't think she could top Animal Kingdom, as it was so unlike any colouring book I'd seen before, but those amazingly intricate, fine-lined animals made up from hundreds of tiny shards could never be anything but stunning.

As you can imagine this book is full of exotic rainforest dwellers, large leafed fauna and ready-to-be-vividly-coloured insects, all in that unique Millie Marotta style we all love. Some pages have suggestions of details you can add or colours to use, and you're encouraged to add your own backgrounds where possible. As with the first book, you're left with a blank double-spread to create a tropical wonderland of your own. Take a look at a snapshot of the pages below.

Physically, the book is pretty much the same as Animal Kingdom, so if you have a copy of that you'll know the paper is really good quality with crisp white pages. It's also the same square size and thickness but with a different colour spine, so the two books sit lovely together on the shelf. The pages are double-sided but water based markers like Triplus will not bleed through. The only qualm I have about this format is that it allows some of the illustrations to disappear into the spine which isn't great, especially as they're so lovely. You don't want to take your time colouring a really nice picture if the centre of it is lost in the crease. The line thickness used is again that same fine line, meaning colour transforms the picture rather than just filling in spaces.

Have a look at my Lemur! I went to Twycross Zoo with the kids last week and we got up close to the family of lemurs they have there, so I just had to colour this in. I used a woodland palette, and I'm really pleased with the way it turned out.