Grandfather’s Book: Color Him Loved

As sisters, we compiled a coloring book for our grandfather as a gift for his 90th birthday celebration. To find stories about him that we could illustrate and that would be of interest to our children, we read his personal history. We came up with 14 stories and facts about his life that we decided to use in our book. For example, he was baptized by an elderly man who, as a child, was baptized by the Prophet Joseph Smith.

We began looking for pictures to illustrate the short printed story on each page. Because our artistic abilities are limited, we were pleased at how many pictures we found in the Friend magazine and other sources that we could trace or copy. The Friend also gave us ideas like making a dot-to-dot picture of the country where Grandfather served his mission and creating a coded message to decipher. We traced over a photo of my grandfather to use on the cover.

All of his descendants gathered for a special program to honor grandfather, and we distributed the coloring books to each family. The books were wonderfully received. Grandfather has since died, but we are grateful we were able to make this remembrance of him that will help his descendants know him better.—Jill Davis Stewart, Las Vegas, Nevada, and Kaye Davis Esplin, Salt Lake City, Utah