Bearded Dragon Daydreams Coloring Book

Coloring and drawing fun for children and adults! And a useful tool for promoting language development in children! (Any child and any language!)

What are bearded dragons thinking when they’re staring into space?

A fun-filled coloring book for all ages, Bearded Dragon Daydreams finally answers the profound question that has puzzled the world for centuries:

What are bearded dragons thinking when they’re staring into space?

In this delightful book you’ll find 30 illustrations that show what these thoughtful creatures are daydreaming about when sitting quietly and gazing off into the distance. In addition, there are two “challenge pages” for drawing your own bearded dragon daydreams.

Each coloring page is single-sided, with the back intentionally left blank, so they can be colored more cleanly and even removed from the book for display, if desired.

Along with coloring and drawing fun, this book can be used in various ways to promote language development in children. It includes a page of useful ideas to help parents make the most of the book as a productive language tool with their kids.

Available in paperback, worldwide, at Amazon, the global Amazon sites, and other booksellers.

Useful Ideas for Parents

Bearded Dragon Daydreams is not only a fun activity book for kids, it can help fuel their language development, too. Whether your child is learning one language or two (or even more languages than that), give these ideas a try to boost his or her ability in the language of your choice.

Talk with your child about each image. Prompt him or her to respond by starting with the question: What do you see? This simple, open-ended question offers children, of any age or ability, the opportunity to express themselves according to their capacity.

From there, continue by asking suitable questions about the image and about the child’s experience related to the image. For instance, a few questions about the very first image—the flying dragon daydream—might be:

What is the bearded dragon doing?
What is he/she feeling? How can you tell?
Do you like dragons? Why? (Why not?)
What do you know about dragons?
Do you wish you could fly? Why? (Why not?)

The more you can playfully engage with your child in communicating about each image—before, during, or after the child colors it—the more you’ll be stretching his or her language development.

Write something on the back of the image. Promote your child’s literacy development, too, by making use of the blank back side of these images.

If your child isn’t writing yet, you can take dictation. Write down what he or she wants to say about it. Maybe one short sentence; maybe a whole story. In the same way, children with some writing ability can be asked to write as much as they’re able to, from a single word to a single sentence, from several sentences to a full story.

You could even create a story together by taking turns writing sentences, or portions of each sentence, to develop the tale.

As these ideas suggest, there are a range of ways to make the most of the coloring pages in this book—as well as the many other images you come across in daily life—to encourage your child to engage more actively in the language or languages of your family.

And when you do—mindfully, creatively, playfully—your efforts will continuously help to advance the child’s language ability, bit by bit, over the days and years of childhood.

Adam Beck Reveals the Inside Story of Bearded Dragon Daydreams

Bearded Dragon Daydreams was inspired by a real-life boy’s real-life bearded dragon and became a creative collaboration between father, son, and our illustrator friend.

This book was the result of a creative project I pursued with my son, who recently turned 13, in order to engage with him more in English (our minority language) during the nearly three months he was out of school because of the coronavirus outbreak. If not for this extra time at home together, I doubt the book would exist at all.

And it certainly wouldn’t exist if we hadn’t brought Fifa home as a baby in the spring of 2019. Since that day Fifa has become practically the most important member of our family, sitting calmly on the kitchen table for meals and watching TV with us in the living room. Fifa is very cute and very sweet (she likes to be held and petted), but she mostly just sits silently and stares blankly into space.

So maybe a month before the coronavirus outbreak began, Roy and I came up with an amusing idea for a coloring book based on the question: What is Fifa really thinking about when she’s sitting there “daydreaming”?

And though we even brainstormed some funny scenes for this book, it was basically the kind of idea that’s fun to think about but you don’t actually expect to pursue.

And yet, not long after that, we did!

With the schools closed, I sat down with Roy and we developed the concept more concretely. We then teamed up with a talented illustrator (Roy is a budding artist but balked at doing the illustrations himself) and, day by day, we worked on the book with him and were thrilled to watch the scenes we imagined come to life.

The result is the Bearded Dragon Daydreams Coloring Book, which Roy and I (and Fifa, too) are now so pleased to share with you. And, in fact, because this project went so well, and we’re so happy with the result, Roy and I have already begun working on another book project together—and again, using our target language to do it!

If you like this book, the boy and bearded dragon behind it all would be so grateful if you shared your positive impressions with others. Social media posts, and reviews at Amazon, Goodreads, and elsewhere online, can help others find the book and enjoy it, too. Thank you!