Outside the lines

Lefty press Reach & Teach has published Sometimes the Spoon Runs Away with Another Spoon, a coloring book by Jacinta Bunnell and Nathaniel Kusinitz. The "tea, trains and tiaras for everyone!" message throughout is winningly lighthearted, even if such jokes as "Marriage is so gay" (illustrated with a wedding cake topped by two brides) are overcomplicated for the little kids the coloring book is ostensibly aimed at. Recalling similarly aimed titles published in the 1970s by alternative presses like Lollipop Power, Sometimes the Spoon goes further than A Train for Jane or even Heather Has Two Mommies in its playful questioning of gender roles: while princesses building rocket ships has been more normalized than this book seems to think, Grumpy in Snow White's heels does provide an edge. I'm not sure the pictures, droll but too fine-lined for crayons, beg to be colored, but I suspect that's not completely the point anyway.

-- Roger Sutton