Beautiful Doodles By Nellie Ryan [Book]

“I’m bored!” is a common sentiment heard in my household. No matter how much we give our kids to do they never seem satisfied. I was pleased to discover a series of doodle books that entertains my daughter for hours on end. The first title we purchased was Beautiful Doodles by Nellie Ryan.

First of all, you may be wondering what a doodle book is. It is a collection of drawing prompts with partially illustrated pages, encouraging the ‘reader’ to create the rest of the picture. Several such books are on the market but many present extremely simplistic ideas and crude drawings, which is fine for younger artists. My daughter, however, found them to be boring and kind of ugly. There is even a doodle book available that is specifically marketed to girls but the prompts are stereotypically girly and boring.

The collection created and illustrated by Nellie Ryan are fresh, creative, and really well-drawn. In Beautiful Doodles, there are over 100 drawing to complete and they range across a broad variety of subject matter – create different kites, draw birds on wires, fill tide/rock pools, imagine a pillow fight, set up a stage performance, display postcards from around the world, and so much more.

A page that starts like this:

May soon turn into this:

I have been so impressed by what my daughter has come up with and the imagination that this book stirs up in her. So impressed, in fact, that I even went and bought her another book in the series called Fabulous Doodles (with a coupon, of course). Sometimes I even get a little urge to doodle on a page when my daughter’s not looking.

“I love these books – they’re awesome!” – my daughter, almost 11 years old.

The other books focus on interior design, clothing design, etc. and don’t seem as fun. Still, we are hoping Ms. Ryan will release more books similar t0 the previous two mentioned – we love them!