Review – Counting Colours and Cthulhu
Review – Counting Colours and Cthulhu
Writer: Jason Ciaramella
Illustrator: Joshua Janes
Publisher: Kickstarter
Release Date: April-May 2021
Counting Colours and Cthulhu, is a children’s educational board book. It’s an incredibly wacky idea that looks like a goth and a unicorn that farts rainbows, had a love child! It’s bright and dark, it’s wild and wacky. Lo and behold, my kids love it!
The Team behind C is for Cthulhu
Eisner-nominated writer Jason Ciaramella and illustrator Joshua Janes have completed the highly-anticipated follow-up to the successful Lovecraftian children’s board books, C is for Cthulhu: The Lovecraft Alphabet Book and Sweet Dreams Cthulhu. This new children’s book teaches numbers and colours using Lovecraft inspired monsters.
The alt subject matter
I was really sceptical, I read through it and was like only Emos would let their kids read this, no way my pink and fluffy girls are going to like it but did I mention, it’s really colourful? Us adults can see the dark, kids see the light and funny side of 4 orange cultists dancing around a fire. Or 6 yellow Hasturs who never show their face, just an eyeball!
Learning from monsters
Obviously, this continues the tradition of kids learning from monsters such as Cookie Monster, Love monster, these are cute, fluffy, cuddly monsters, this book is a bit darker, odd and almost occult looking and ok Cthulhu is cute but the other ones are pretty terrifying. Hey who am I to judge, it’s a kids book, therefore, I let them judge it. It’s weird, I wouldn’t have chosen it but the sprogs seem to think it’s great fun so, for that, it gets a thumbs up. Plus they asked for it two nights in a row so that never happens!
The art and final thoughts
The art is pretty good, it catches they eye and all that but it doesn’t feel child friendly in terms of scary, weird, and nightmarish creatures. Ones that look like the coronavirus cell, that all the news channels love to blast all over our screens! Or something found at the bottom of a witches brew. I find it bizarre but pretty.
I imagine it’s something in ten years time, the kids turning round and saying mum, this really doesn’t seem appropriate for kids, how are we not scarred for life etc, etc. Who knows they might well be, they do have me as a mother. So yeah, the book is certainly different, alternative and definitely wacky. Hey, I guess that’s the look they are going for and it seems to have worked. Their Kickstarter campaign has … excuse the pun… truly kicked off! I know I cringed too!
Let us know what you make of Counting Colours and Cthulhu.
Buy tickets for BGCP Comic Con in and around Glasgow Scotland – BUY TICKETS
Check out all of our Comic, Movie, Television and Videogame Reviews HERE and our Podcasts/Interviews HERE
If you want to be part of the BGCP community, Join us on Discord, Twitter, Instagram etc then click HERE
[yasr_multiset setid=1] [yasr_visitor_multiset setid=1]
