The book Flying Colors: A guide to flags from around the world caught my attention with its title. After all, it’s genuinely interesting to learn why each country has its particular flag and what significance lies behind it. The cover even promised to delve into the history of all these colors and shapes. I was intrigued enough to buy the book in print, which I rarely do these days. But I had no choice, as there’s no digital version available.
The book is quite small, just 112 pages. And even those pages don’t contain much text—there’s a lot of graphic content. Plus, early on, the author introduces little helper figures of different colors (they’re even on the cover, raising flags like American marines). It’s unfortunate, though, that these helpers don’t play much of a role later on. They appear in nearly every illustration, but quickly fade into the background, becoming “white noise” that you barely notice. I had expected each one to serve a unique purpose, but that wasn’t the case.
The style of the book seemed strange to me. On one hand, there’s little text, lots of graphics, and a simplified presentation, which made it feel like it was aimed at children. However, the tone is rather dry, so I doubt it would really capture a child’s interest. They might flip through a few pages at most.
As an adult, I also quickly got bored. The author didn’t delve into the science of flags much—just touched on a few basic terms and then stopped. After that, the rest of the book is just short descriptions of individual flags.
Sometimes there’s an actual story behind a flag, or an explanation about why many flags in a certain region share similar colors. I’d never really thought about that before, so it was interesting to learn and compare.
But for other countries, it seems like the author had nothing much to say. It felt odd—some flags are discussed in detail with all their versions, while others are just shown as a small image with little explanation. I was curious to learn about the Belarusian flag and its history (including the white-red-white version and its similarities to neighboring flags). But there’s absolutely nothing about that in the book.
The author could have easily written something about the flags of the former Soviet republics (even though many are similar), explaining what each one symbolizes. But he gave only very brief mentions (with a bit more detail about Russia).
He spends considerably more time on the most famous flags, but those are already well-known to most people.
Overall, the book reads in a dry manner, and you get tired of it quickly. The saving grace is that there isn’t much text, and it’s short.
I thought about showing it to the kids, but no one seemed interested. So now it just sits on the shelf.
My rating: 2/5
