Read & Color · 3 books in 1
Fruit Super Powers Unite!
3 books in 1 — read and color your way through fruity superpowers.
By David Gibson
- Ages
- Ages 4–8 · read together, color solo
- Length
- 74 pages
- Read time
- About 20 minutes per story
- Healthy habits
- Food curiosity
- Coloring
- Read together
About the book
Most books that try to get children interested in fruit do it by telling them what they should eat. Fruit Super Powers Unite! does the opposite. It hands every fruit a costume, a personality and a job to do, and lets the reader work out for themselves why the orange is the one that shows up when someone is fighting off a cold.
The result is three linked stories in a single volume — Citrus Defenders, Berry Power and Tropical Fruit Protectors — that run to 74 pages in total. Each story introduces its own squad, gives each member a power that maps loosely to something the real fruit actually does for a growing body, and then puts the whole team into a scrape they have to solve together.
The second thing the book is, is a coloring book. Every page is drawn to be finished by the reader. That changes how the book gets used: instead of one bedtime and then the shelf, it tends to come back out on a rainy afternoon, at a kitchen table, in a waiting room. Because it is a digital download, you can print a favorite page as many times as you like — which matters more than it sounds when two children want the same one.
Inside
What's in it
Citrus Defenders
Oranges, lemons and limes make up the first squad — the loud, bright, slightly show-offy one. This is the story that does the most work on the idea of fighting something off, and it is usually the one children ask for again first because the characters are the easiest to do voices for.
Berry Power
Small fruit, big effect. The berry squad is built around the idea that the tiniest member of a team is not the least useful one — a point that lands quietly with any child who happens to be the smallest in their class.
Tropical Fruit Protectors
Mango, pineapple and the rest of the warm-weather crew close the collection out. It is the most visually adventurous of the three, and the pages have the most going on in them, which makes them the most satisfying to color in.
Every page is a coloring page
The art is drawn as line work meant to be filled in, not as finished illustration with a coloring section bolted on the back. Crayons, pencils and markers all work; if you are printing at home, standard letter or A4 paper is fine.
Questions to ask after reading
You do not need all of these, and you should not work through them like a worksheet — a book that turns into a quiz stops getting requested. Pick one. The conversation it starts is worth more than the answer.
- Which fruit hero would you want on your team, and what job would you give them?
- If you invented a fourth squad, what fruit would be in it? What would their power be?
- The teams only win when they work together. Can you think of a time you needed someone else's help to finish something?
- Pick a fruit you have never tried. What do you think its power would be?
- Which page do you want to color first — and what colors are you going to break the rules with?
Notes for the grown-up reading it
How to use it if you are trying to widen a narrow diet
Don't pair the book with a plate. Children who are cautious about food read a plate of cut fruit arriving mid-story as a negotiation, and the book stops being fun. It works better as a slow burn: read the story, color the pages, let the characters become familiar, and let the actual fruit turn up separately days later with no reference back to the book. Curiosity survives when it isn't being cashed in.
Printing it
The download is a PDF. Print the pages you want rather than the whole thing — most families end up with a small stack of favorites rather than a bound copy. If you have more than one child, print duplicates of the popular pages before anyone sees them.
A note on the science
The powers in the book are a storytelling device, not a nutrition curriculum. The intent is to make a child curious enough to try something, not to teach them micronutrients. For actual dietary guidance, your pediatrician is the right source.
