A Tallgrass Prairie Alphabet

While most coloring books offer fanciful recreations of the wonders of nature, Mark Müller’s realistic drawings allow you to embellish real-world birds, plants, and animals with all the colors you can imagine. Layer your creative whimsy on his meticulous accuracy. Go ahead, ink in a hot pink bison or a turquoise sandhill crane or a buttery yellow tree frog, pouring magic into reality. Turn the tallgrass prairie’s pale purple coneflowers ruby red, the black swallowtail butterfly into a green-dotted swallowtail, or white-tailed deer into fuschia-tailed. Why shouldn’t red-winged blackbirds flaunt salmon epaulets, or American goldfinches turn coppery, or rose-breasted grosbeaks celadon-breasted? Amid the creatures teeming in the midwestern grasses and wetlands on these pages, you’ll even find the most common invasive species—see if you can find the garlic mustard and the emerald ash borer! Here is the wild Midwest as it really is, for your coloring pleasure.