Preschool- and early-elementary age children do not need to be taught how to be creative. They are a fountain of surprising perspectives, unassimilated flights of fancy, and wild ideas filtered through a kaleidescopic and rapidly shifting internal logic. Watching a child who has pushed him- or herself to the point of mastering the crayon, the marker, and the pen to the point where they can make their hand approximate what they see in their mind is a magical process. It is a special process. And it has no need for "lessons about the creative use of color and patterns" that open with color-by-number coloring pages and then "progress" to freedom through mastery of a particular artist's highly personal and signature style. Period.

P'kolino disagrees with this philosophy, and apparently pop artist Romero Britto does as well, because they've just come out with a "Color Like An Artist" coloring book that will teach your child, in paint-by-number fashion, to "use patterns and colors" like he does. You too can have a little Romero Britto Jr. churning out masterpieces for your refrigerator door!

I have two arguments to offer in my attempt to protect your child from this book.

First: To say that art is supposed to be a fun, freeing activity for young children, rather than providing an adult expectation to "measure up to," might seem like a prescription for some children but not others. If a coloring page is telling them what form the objects in their mind should take on paper, telling them what colors to use, and where, might genuinely excite a child who enjoys learning other subjects through worksheets. But art, for the preschool and early primary-grade child, is different from reading, writing, telling time, and anything else you could teach through a fill-in-the-blank model. Art is about exploring and expressing a child's own thoughts and ideas about the world at a time when words inevitably fail them. A young child who would prefer to be told how to draw something is one step away from asking you to just draw it for them. There is a fine line between pulling an assist and helping your child work out a technical matter they are dealing with, and dominating their imagination.

Second: Your child is more creative than you. Not only that, but your child -- not some fictional, idealized, or gifted child, your child -- is more creative than Romero Britto, Pablo Picasso, or anyone else who might deign to "teach" your young child about art. What those artists had, or have, that your child doesn't, are technical skills, an interest and/or insight into themes beyond the range of childhood, and an educational and creative background that puts more tools at their disposal in expressing themselves. The age range of this product -- 2-6 -- is not the right time for these topics. And as far as creativity is concerned, the best a professional artist can do is preserve or recapture for themselves some part of what your child naturally possesses.

Adult fans of Romero Britto's "optimistic" pop style have plenty of ways to surround themselves with it -- jewelry or salt and pepper shakers from the Franklin Mint, Britto luggage sets, as well as trinket boxes, travel mugs, wine bottle stoppers, wind chimes. As for your commendable impulse to train up your two- to six-year-old child for adulthood, teach them to ride a bike, play Angry Birds, or make salt dough ornaments, but don't try to help them learn to be creative. It's one of the rare and precious cases where you can sit back and let them teach you what you used to know.