Prerrogative

Mothers have been known to, on occasion, make purchases for themselves thinly disguised as for their children, particularly their daughters. This is, buying lovely things they love in a little hope their children will too - but it's OK if they don't anyway.


Early in March I was going to mention it but it didn't seem right. Last Saturday while I went for a walk dropped by a bookstore and purchased this color book. For my 10 months old daughter, of course.

It really impressed me that this isn't a reinterpretation of sorts of the color books published during the 80's. My sister and I had a couple and loved them so much that we preferred making photocopies and coloring the same pictures over again. With watercolors, pencils, fibers, gouache even, and a time or two I think my mother joined us.

I was saying, these aren't any updated version. It's virtually the same thing.

Except for the center page, which has stickers with pictures and with spaces - ostensibly to write your name and stick on school notebooks. In my time, those were sold separately and a bit hard to find, if I'm not mistaken.

The girl in the bike was my favorite picture of all time. Thank you, girl in the bike, for coming back!

***

Sarah Kay was a bit of a mystery back then, and the internet shows she still is. Her biography doesn't seem to have been updated for at least 25 years and sounds tragic as ever - these depictions of a timeless and idyllic childhood were created to entertain a very sick girl, the daughter of the artist. There doesn't seem to be any new designs aside the batch published with the sticker album "I love you" by Figurine Panini, and there seems to be a lot of knockoffs and non franchised items. This book in particular, though, seems to.

A little more on Sarah Kay can be read here.