The outlines are thick and the spaces inside them are big, which is the entire design brief for a first coloring book. A three year old who cannot yet stay inside a fine line can fill a garbage truck, a digger bucket or a hot air balloon and have it look like the thing it is meant to be.

One vehicle to a page, with a short line of text underneath: a garbage truck collects trash, a digger scoops dirt, a balloon drifts, a submarine dives deep, a plane flies high, a car goes on roads. Cars, trucks, diggers, planes, rockets, ships and submarines run through the whole book, so a child who is currently only interested in things with wheels still has thirty two pages of them.

Every vehicle arrives as a bold blank outline, and it is the scene around it that is already printed in color: crayon clouds behind the balloon, pink and green seaweed under the submarine, a grey road beneath the car, an orange heap of dirt at the digger's bucket. Only the plane carries color of its own, a blue stripe and three windows. Nothing about the page reads as empty, and there is exactly one shape to fill.

What it is really doing is pencil control. Usborne says so outright, and holding a crayon inside a big shape is the step before holding a pencil inside a small one. Paperback, 32 pages, 9.45 by 6.69 in, small enough for a bag. By Kirsteen Robson, illustrated by Jenny Addison. Usborne, August 2023. Publisher age guidance: 3 years and up.

My Big Summer Coloring Book is the larger format, with over 90 summer pages to color.

My Big Happy Coloring Book is the larger format, with over 90 pages of animals and outdoor scenes drawn in the same bold outline.