15 Dec A Spanish-English colouring book for kids
Catty colouring adventures in Spain
We have created a fun activity and colouring book for kids to learn Spanish, centred around of our two cats. That’s probably not what you were expecting from me. I am usually plugging my East European cookery books at this time of year (please do buy them, they make wonderful Christmas presents). And let me explain how this whole colouring adventure came about…
A small, side project
After traditionally publishing four cookery books, I’m currently considering self-publishing my next one (but this is another story…). As a result, I decided to learn Indesign. It was very difficult at first. The idea of designing and publishing a whole book felt extremely daunting. I needed a smaller project in order to learn the basics and to test the Amazon KDP self-publishing process. Minus the high stakes and the nauseating anxiety. The idea to create a Spanish colouring book came spontaneously, because it’s something that I actually need for my children. The girls are bilingual in Polish and English, but they have Guatemalan heritage as well. We would love Spanish to be their third language. They have family in Mexico, who we would like to connect with (we were invited to a wedding when my daughter was 2 months old, but that was too soon to go sadly). Yet with their busy schedules, it’s often hard to fit those extra Spanish lessons in. I wanted an engaging Spanish colouring and activity book for them to take to restaurants and travel with.
Introducing Coco&Kaspar
I shared the idea for the Spanish colouring book with my partner, saying it would probably take a couple of weeks to make (what with AI etc. – Ha!). Since he was between jobs and a fluent Spanish speaker, he agreed to get on board. We decided to base it on our two beloved cats, Coco and Kaspar. Now, Coco and Kaspar are both street cats that came to our separate lives a couple of years before we started our relationship. It seems like a strange coincidence (or synchronicity), but they are basically the same age. Sadly, they do not get on as well as our colouring book protagonists. At 15, they are both getting on a bit, so this is a way of immortalising our beloved pets.
The trials and tribulations of a bilingual colouring book
The idea was that we would have some fun experimenting with AI and quickly create something small, fun and useful, while also getting to grips with the whole design and publishing process. We soon realised that nothing was as simple as we thought it was going to be – funny that we are still realising this in our forties! 6 months later, we have finally finished and published Colour and Learn Spanish with Coco & Kaspar (it’s not something we could work on full time, as we have other jobs to be getting on with as well). The AI was fun to experiment with, but it was maddening too. Everything needed a lot of editing on photoshop. 6 months on, the AI has improved, so we have been going back and forth with the illustrations until the last moment. We are happy with the result though and looking forward to giving it to our girls in their stockings for Christmas. If you are looking any last minute stocking fillers for your kids, please consider getting it and leaving a review. (it’s available now in the UK and from 17th December onwards in the US, with American spellings).