The Night Before Christmas Coloring Book Paperback – Coloring Book, July 1, 1981

The media could not be loaded. This great coloring book is filled with beautiful illustrations to go along with the famous Christmas poem. The pictures are heavily detailed and shaded, so coloring in larger swathes seems to work better than trying to get in and do a single detail at a time. What is kind of cool about this is that you can use a single color over the gray scale and it comes out looking like you spent some time adding detailed shading.The designs are printed on both sides of the paper and some of the designs spread across two pages. All of the designs (including the two page spreads) stop before they reach the bound edge. The binding is glued rather than sewn. You can cut the pages out with a penknife if you wish to, but for me, I will consider this a color book that stays together. I was able to press hard on the spine and get the book to lay flat.All of my markers and gel pens bleed-through on this paper. My coloring pencils work great (especially the soft core ones), so I will only be using pencils to finish this book.I love the illustrations with the jolly Santa (especially the one with him upside down in the chimney.) It brings back the fun of the holiday I had as a child. I can imagine my husband and I coloring this book each year as we head into the holidays. I'm finding that by not being too detailed, the coloring is going very fast. I'm going to finish this one in color pencils but I may buy another one next year to experiment with pastels.

This little coloring book is a well known, fun story book by John O’Brien for Dover. For $5.99 ... its a steal!It is 2 sided, very grey shaded, and takes pencil crayons very well. The little house was done with Polychromos, and the red night shift man was done with Prismacolor.The paper is quite nice, semi-smooth, about 40 ish pound.Beautifully drawn, and a great buy.My husband says he thinks the colored pages look like they belong in the book as a pre-colored page!

First of all, the cover art on this book is beautiful and whimsical! There is a sample colored picture inside the front cover to serve as inspiration. There is no bookplate page, but while I generally love such a page, it is not missed in this book. The title page has a very nice jack-in-the-box image to practice on if you wish, with supplemental drawings that spill over onto the back of the previous page. Next, there is a nice blurb about the poem and author of the poem (and more drawings to color if you wish). Finally: the unusual and strangely beautiful drawings to color and each page contains some of the poem. Some have been upset at the heavier than usual dark lines/shading. I actually liked this! It gives an "old world" feeling. It challenges you to think and brings satisfaction even as you work on it. However, I will say that I have already discovered pastels to be my weapon of choice to fill in the large areas such as night sky and wallpaper. I feel it is a magical book and that I got my value for it.

This is a great book even if you don't color it. I'll definitely have to practice my shading. Like it very much. I bought for my great granddaughter because of the story and pictures. She's not ready to color but she'll enjoy it anyway. I bought one for myself and read the book to her and now she has most of the story memorized.

Our family is enjoying this coloring book so much! We take turns with it while sitting at restaurant tables waiting for our meal, or relaxing in the evening, or one of us grabs it and colors when a free moment pops up. It's lovely & fun & a bit whimsical. The drawings *are* heavily shaded, but colored pencils are perfect for them. In fact, with a pencil you can layer color or give a hint of color even in the darkest areas. We haven't tried pastels yet, though they might work well. Whatever you use, it needs a fine point.

Spent months coloring this book to give to my 6 yr old grandson for Christmas. We loved to color together and I thought it would be a nice remembrance that he could read to his children someday and remember all the quiet hours we shared. Hope he loves it !The pics are beautiful -- used Prismacolor pencils and course, white panpastel for the snow. Just love this book.

I love this book. The pictures are great , they are kind of gray scale so when you color them they turn out very nice. This will be part of my Christmas decor .I love this poem .We will be reading it again next Christmas. Great book, fun to color and fun to read.

I cannot wait to color this! It’s fine that it’s printed on both sides because i think pencil is definitely the way to go so both sides is no biggie for me. I love this type of greyscale. When you color it, it’s just beautiful! i may even buy another to give to someone who just had a baby. i think a personally colored book with a child’s christmas poem classic is an adorable gift