Colouring-In Won’t Save Reading - But Drawing Might
- David Salariya
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
The great colouring-book moment (and why it makes me uneasy)
Something odd has happened in children’s publishing: colouring books are being talked about as if they’re part of a rescue plan. Not for literacy, exactly - but for the charts, the tills, the “we’re fine actually” narrative.
And here’s the extra twist: many of these breakout colouring brands don’t behave like a single author’s vision at all. They feel like a studio label - a “house name” or packaging-style identity where the brand is the author and the output is scaled like a product range.
From a retail point of view, it’s perfect: low-risk, repeatable, giftable, easy to stack, easy to reorder. From a child-development point of view, I’m less convinced we should be cheering.
Because colouring-in is not drawing. And when we muddle the two, we muddle what children are actually learning.
Colouring-in: what it is good for
To be fair. Colouring-in can help children practise:
Fine motor control (steady hand movements; wrist and finger control)
Hand-eye coordination (tracking a boundary, placing marks where you intend)
Attention and persistence (sticking with a task)
Emotional regulation (a repetitive, absorbing activity can settle nerves)
This “calming effect” is not just wishful thinking. Studies in adults show structured colouring can reduce anxiety and negative mood, though results depend on the activity and the person - and it’s not “art therapy” in itself.
So yes: for some children, some days, colouring-in is exactly what they need - a gentle
glide into marks and materials.
But that’s only half the story.
What colouring-in doesn’t teach (and why that matters)
Colouring-in mostly trains children to complete an image.
It’s practice at execution, not invention.
It rarely teaches:
how to generate an idea from nothing
how to cope with a “wrong” line
how to revise and re-see an image
how to make symbols for things (a person, a dog, a feeling, a memory)
how to use drawing as thinking
And this is where it becomes tricky.
Drawing is tied to broader development too: research links drawing with language and executive functions in preschoolers (working memory, inhibition, shifting).
There’s also evidence that drawing can improve children’s mood, especially when it helps them become absorbed in an imaginary world.
In other words: drawing isn’t a “nice extra”. It’s part of how children learn to represent the world - and themselves.
The big risk: staying inside the lines becomes a belief system
When the main creative invitation is “colour this in”, the unspoken lesson can become:
The picture already exists. Your job is not to make one - only to behave nicely inside it.
That may sound dramatic, but it’s exactly the opposite of what creative confidence needs.
Children don't need permission to:
draw the way they want to
draw strangely
draw again
cross things out
change their minds
push past the first obvious idea
The messy page isn’t failure. It’s thinking.
So what should we encourage instead?
“Beyond the line” drawing (simple, powerful exercises)
Try these with any child aged 4 - 12:
The Wobbly Line Game Draw one wobbly line. Ask: What could this become? Turn it into five different things (snake, river, eyebrow, mountain, spaghetti).
Wrong-Lines Welcome Start a drawing. After 20 seconds, deliberately add a “wrong” line. Now the child must adapt the drawing so the wrong line becomes important.
Draw the Sound Play music. Draw what it feels like: sharp, soft, jumpy, heavy.
Three-Shape Challenge Give three shapes (circle, triangle, rectangle). They must make a character using all three.
Monster Improvements Draw a monster. Now redesign it to survive: make it faster, warmer, better at hiding, kinder, sillier.
These are not art lessons.
They are thinking lessons disguised as play.
Colouring as design, not colouring as compliance
If you do use colouring, flip it:
print the same outline twice
colour each version to show a different mood (happy/sad; calm/scared)
limit the palette (only 3 colours) to teach choices
ask the child to add new elements (background, props, speech bubbles)
invite them to break the frame and draw outside the shape
Now colouring becomes a springboard into authorship, not just “finishing”.
A sketchbook culture, not a worksheet culture
Sketchbooks teach something colouring books often don’t: ownership.
A sketchbook says: this is where ideas live. A colouring page can accidentally say: this is where you behave.
Colouring-in rehearses control. Drawing rehearses thought.Colouring-in rewards compliance. Drawing rewards curiosity.
Colouring-in finishes something.
Drawing begins something.
A child who colours learns how to behave inside a boundary.
A child who draws learns how to invent one.
Yes, some children and adults find comfort in colouring. Some need the calm of repetition, the reassurance of a shape already solved. That is fine. We all need moments where the world is already outlined for us.
But if colouring becomes the main invitation - if children are endlessly handed pictures to complete rather than worlds to imagine - we should not be surprised when they hesitate before the blank page, waiting for someone else to tell them what goes where.
Drawing is how children learn that ideas come from them. That a wrong line is not a failure but a negotiation.That thinking can be visual, playful, provisional. That imagination is not a talent you either possess or lack, but a muscle strengthened by use.
If creativity has a road, drawing is not a decorative lay-by. It is the main route. Sometimes bumpy, often messy, occasionally absurd - but always heading somewhere new.
So how does drawing help reading?
Reading is not just decoding words. It is prediction, inference, sequencing, symbol-making, tolerance of ambiguity, and staying with meaning long enough for it to unfold.
Drawing rehearses all of these.
When a child draws, they practise turning ideas into symbols. They sequence events (“this happened before that”). They revise (“that didn’t work — try again”). They stay with an image long enough for it to change. They learn that meaning is made, not received fully formed.
For reluctant readers especially, drawing lowers the emotional stakes. It keeps them inside the world of story without demanding immediate mastery of text. A child who draws a character is already halfway to reading about one.
Drawing doesn’t replace reading. It prepares the ground for it.
A plea to publishers, parents, schools (and anyone who sells “creativity”)
If the children’s market wants a genuine literacy win, it shouldn’t confuse “keeping hands busy” with “building minds”.
Yes to calm, yes to materials, yes to making marks.
But also: yes to the blank page.Yes to children going beyond the line - because beyond the line is where imagination stops being a performance and becomes a skill.
About David Salariya
David Salariya is a writer, illustrator and publisher who has spent a lifetime encouraging children to do something slightly alarming: think for themselves, draw their own conclusions, and occasionally colour outside the lines.
Best known as the creator of You Wouldn’t Want To Be…, A Very Peculiar History and many other globally successful series, he has published books in more than 35 languages and was named Independent Children’s Publisher of the Year by the IPG. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and has exhibited his artwork at the Scottish Royal Academy - though he remains suspicious of anything that sounds too tidy.
David began drawing before he learned that there were “right” ways of doing it and has never quite recovered. His work has consistently argued - sometimes loudly, sometimes mischievously - that drawing is not a decorative extra but a way of thinking: a visual language through which children test ideas, make mistakes, and discover that imagination is something you do, not something you are handed pre-outlined.
He has long been sceptical of colouring-in as a substitute for creativity. Not because it is evil (it isn’t), nor because some children don’t enjoy it (they do), but because it risks teaching a quiet, dangerous lesson: that the picture already exists and your job is merely to behave inside it.
David is armed with pencils, sketchbooks and an enduring belief that the blank page is not a problem to be solved, but an invitation.
Preferably one that gets really messy.
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