Susan Striker: Outside the Lines

Teaching Pre K-8, Mar 2004 by Romano, Katherine

With her Anti-Coloring Book series, this vivacious author is leading kids to the road to self-expression

Susan Striker has never been one for blending in with the crowd. With her popular series, The Anti-Coloring Book, celebrating its 26th year of publication, Susan Striker has made a career for herself out of not being afraid to go against the tide. We found that clearly in evidence when we visited her at her home in Easton, CT this past April. From the brilliant purple carpet underfoot, to the lively and oddly entrancing Oaxacan animal sculptures on her walls and the dish of lilachued M&M®'s on her coffee table, Susan's home is a literal palette of all the things (and colors) she loves best. When she threw open her raspberry-colored front door with a vibrant scarf artfully draped over one shoulder and ushered us to a seat on one of her plush red couches, we knew we were in for a colorful afternoon, to say the very least.

The birth of the anti-coloring book. An art teacher for, as she puts it, "180 years," Susan went to graduate school in the 1970s where she hoped to be learning new and exciting teaching techniques. She was disappointed to find that much of what she had learned 10 years earlier in college was still being taught - the general consensus was that art teachers hated the idea of coloring books and that parents just weren't seeing the detrimental effects coloring books had on their children's budding creativity. Susan vocalized her feelings about this idea so much in class, that her professor decided devising a creative alternative to coloring books would be her sole objective for the duration of the course. By the end of the semester, Susan had pooled all of her best art lessons into a coloring book format. When she presented her ideas at the end of the semester, she got a round of applause from her classmates and the beginning of a revolutionary idea for a series of books for children.

Full of anti-color. With prompts like, "Today is your birthday and inside this box is the present you want most in the world. Can you see it?," "Draw the worst nightmare you ever had" and "Can you change this pair of scissors into something completely different?" The Anti-Coloring Book almost immediately caught on with kids and grown-ups alike. "What's important about my books, I think, is that kids are learning about problem-solving and that there's no one right answer," Susan commented. Soon after publishing the first Anti-Coloring Book in 1978, Susan realized she had a font of ideas that could take the series in a number of directions. She saw that just her son Jason's interests alone could provide a wealth of new material for the series. Both The Superpowers Anti-Coloring Book (out of print) - "My son wore a cape at all times when he was little," she laughed - and The Circus Anti-Coloring Book (Holt, 1994) were written with and for Jason.

New endeavors. While taking a break from teaching to be at home with Jason, Susan began teaching art classes from her home and hosting birthday parties that were filled with awesome kid-centered activities that involved the guests making the loot bags and decorating the cake themselves. "My home became the place to be, I guess," she said. "My friends would tell me that they loved sending their kids to my house because I'd let them paint - something they weren't allowed to do at home." And from that, yet another great idea was born.

Susan opened her first art school for children, Young at Art, in New York City in 1984. The operation has now become a successful franchise with studios in both Westport and Fairfield, CT - and, hopefully, more locations are on the horizon. In fact, the cornerstone on which she built her school also moved her to write her book of the same name. Young at Art was directed to parents and centered on ways to encourage a child's creative thinking. While working on the book, Susan was inspired to write the "Ten Cardinal Rules for Teaching Creative Art," (above) a philosophy by which she feels all teachers should live. "I don't think a lot of people are aware that what a child experiences when creating his or her own art really affects how he or she learns later on," she said.

During our afternoon together, Susan Striker showed us pages and pages of child-crafted artwork she's held dear to her heart throughout her career. She talked in-depth about many of the ideas she's hoping to express in future books, but most of all she spoke at length about her love for kids and her dedication to helping their creativity bloom. In the middle of her ruminations, she paused and leaned forward. "I can tell I've convinced you," she said. Without a doubt, you can call us convinced.

BY KATHERINE ROMANO, ASSOCIATE EDITOR