Not so, thinks Margaret Schwebel, from Collins Booksellers Orange. Like breathing exercises, it’s very relaxing and non-judgemental.”īut the cynic in us couldn’t help wondering if it’s just a fly-by-night kind of a fad. “Doing activities like this can promote calmness and reduce stress and might mean we react in a more measured way to events. ![]() “When you’re doing these activities, you’re in the present moment. Colouring-in is a non-confronting exercise and you’re totally immersed in the activity. “You have to pay attention to detail and mindfulness is an attentional skill like writing poetry, playing a musical instrument or reading a gripping novel. “It’s about doing something that you can really focus on,” says Ireland. Clinical psychologist from Orange, Christine Ireland, who also happens to be a poet and the daughter of three-time Miles Franklin winning novelist David Ireland (The Glass Canoe), told us that one reason for the popularity of colouring books is that many people find them preferable to learning mindfulness meditation. It turned out our instincts were right because the crowd here were well ahead of us: they knew all about colouring books. So we decided to put it out there during an event we were attending in Orange – the fabulous Readers and Writers Festival, ‘Re-Imagining History’ – organised by Central West Libraries. There were bound to be people in the crowd, we reasoned, who would know something about colouring books. But it’s not about story or reading, is it?” “It’s like knitting isn’t it?” says Better Reading’s Director, Cheryl Akle. We have to admit it, it’s a craze we hadn’t taken much notice of at Better Reading – we’re all about the story – but we’ve just started publishing the Top Ten bestselling lists every week and when eight out of ten books in the Top Ten Bestselling Non-Fiction list were colouring books for the second week running, we had to take notice.īut none of us has much experience of colouring-in (well, not since we started wearing long pants) so we were finding it hard to explain the craze. Adults are buying so many colouring-in books that bookshops can’t keep up with the demand. It’s not a new phenomenon – it’s been a craze in some countries for years, France in particular – but it’s been gaining momentum in Australia since the beginning of the year. ![]() We asked a clinical psychologist, a bookseller, and a librarian why adults are going wild about colouring books.
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