CD-ROM Coloring Book

A simple, easy-to-use CD-ROM that can be enjoyed by the youngest of computer users, CD-ROM Coloring Book combines the fun of coloring with the adventure of playing with a new "toy"--the computer. Young children may even learn something about color, design, and eye-hand coordination in the process!

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Content

 A "menu" of 12 categories of pictures, each represented by a labeled picture, is offered to the user at the first screen after the title screen. In all, there are 1,059 different pictures in the following categories from which to choose: Baby Time, Fun Time, Circus, Pets, Christmas, Treasure Trolls, Dinosaurs, Toys, Farm Animals, Wild Life, Fun at School, Woodland Friends. The menu bar, beginning at the left of the screen, offers a palette with a range of 14 bright colors plus white and black. Eighteen more sets of options are available at the click of the mouse. The next set of choices on the menu bar includes a paint bucket icon plus a range of 7 sizes of dots, each one representing a different size of pencil which the user can choose. (Note: The only sounds in the program--various "whooshes" and "gooshes"-- are associated with these 8 choices, a different sound for each choice.) Next are several boxes associated with actions the user can take: ERASE, UNDO, REDO, SAVE (to a folder), and OPEN FOLDER (to view contents). (Note: The only method the reviewer could determine to find out what each of these, or any other option on the menu bar does was by the use of the discovery method.)

Last of all there is a box with a single yellow arrow, which, when clicked, takes the user to the next picture in the same category. The last box, with a larger yellow arrow topped by a slim yellow rectangle, takes the user back to the main menu.

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Audience

 The CD-ROM jacket states that this program was designed by early learning specialists, and it is obviously intended for use by very young children. Children of any age who are intrigued by the idea of manipulating things, however, probably would be willing to work at using the program as long as they are finding success in getting it to do what they want it to do. Older children might tend to get quickly bored with it, after exploring it long enough to determine the limits of what can be done with it.

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Ease of Use

 To get the optimum benefit from this software, children with no computer experience would have to be carefully shown what each of the choices in the menu bar can do. The younger the child, the fewer options could be demonstrated at each session.

After clicking on the Color icon to begin the program, select a category and a picture within that category to color. The easiest and quickest method to color involves first clicking on the paint bucket icon, then clicking on a color choice, and finally, clicking on the section of the picture one wants filled in with that color. Using the pencils is more difficult, requiring eye-hand coordination and manual dexterity. The larger the pencil size, the faster the user can fill in spaces with color and/or design; but staying inside the lines is harder than with the smaller pencils. If the user doesn't care so much about staying inside the lines, but instead is more interested in exploring the colors and designs, as well as the challenge of mastery of the manipulation of the mouse, s/he probably will experience little frustration when learning to use this program.

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System Requirements

IBM:

Sound support requires Sound Blaster compatible sound card.

IBM:

Sound support requires a Windows compatible sound card.

MAC:

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Installation Details

 There is no manual, but this sentence is printed on the CD-ROM jacket: For installation instructions type D:\RUN (where D is your CD-ROM drive letter). (One assumes that these are instructions for installing this software on an IBM-compatible computer.)

I installed the program on a Macintosh Centris 610 computer, as follows: After loading the CD-ROM into the CD drive, I first clicked on the CD-ROM icon, then on CD Color Read Me--one of three choices that came up when the first box opened. There is one screen of instructions, including how to load the program onto the computer's hard disk, how to create a folder, and how to drag the Coloring Book application into the newly-created folder. It is suggested that when printing pictures out for coloring with real crayons, the landscape mode in the print setup dialog be selected. It took about five minutes for the whole program to upload onto my hard disk.

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Recommendations

 This software certainly could be of value and interest to young children old enough to color with some facility in a real coloring book with real crayons. Unfortunately, I did not have access to any young children to field test it when I was preparing this review. From my perspective as an adult and as a parent, I do not think there is enough educational value inherent in CD-ROM Coloring Book to justify the space it would take up on a computer's hard disk, even if the cost is low in comparison to other CD-ROM's.

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Reviewed by Judy Pearce--formerly a public school music teacher, currently a University of Texas at Austin Master of Library and Information Science student and acquisitions librarian for Austin I.S.D. Comments to: jypearce@tenet.edu

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