Dora Coloring Pages

Every Dora episode is a journey from one place to the next, and these Dora coloring pages keep that spirit: almost every page is a step on the way somewhere, across a bridge, down a river or up a pyramid, with Boots right behind.

Dora crosses a rope bridge over the jungle, climbs the steps of a stone pyramid while parrots fly past, crosses a log bridge over a misty gorge, and hops across stepping stones in a stream. She paddles a canoe with Boots, rides a log raft past a waterfall, explores a cave by flashlight, climbs a rope ladder up a tree, and slides down a muddy riverbank into a puddle. She hugs Backpack, who smiles back, untangles Baby Jaguar from a knot of vines, feeds a toucan, leads a bunny, a squirrel, a bear cub and a deer through the flowers, and plants a young tree. Out of the jungle she collects shells on the beach, builds a sandcastle, snorkels among sea turtles, dances with maracas, walks a village path with a basket of fruit, and wears a bobble hat on a snowy mountain. A close portrait shows her with a hibiscus flower behind her ear.

Boots has pages of his own: swinging from a vine, picking bananas from a palm, balancing a pile of fruit on his head along a log, swinging on a tyre, napping in a hammock made from a shirt, trying on the hat of a sleeping sloth, and sitting on a giant banana as a chibi. A jungle path full of orchids and a treehouse with a hammock have no one in them at all, waiting to be explored, and a border of leaves, stars and little red boots leaves space in the middle for a drawing or a name.

The show that talks back

Dora the Explorer first aired on Nick Jr. in 2000, and its big idea was that the audience takes part. Dora turns to the screen and asks a question, then waits, long enough for a child to answer out loud, before carrying on. Each episode follows the same pattern: a place to reach, three stops on the way, a map to check, and Swiper the fox to stop by saying "Swiper, no swiping!" three times.

Dora also teaches Spanish words as she goes: vámonos (let's go), ¡lo hicimos! (we did it), gracias, hola, adiós. The words are simple and repeated, which is exactly how young children pick them up. The same trick works with these pages: ask a child to name each color in Spanish as they use it.

Dora grows up, then starts again

Dora did not stay the same age for good. In 2014 Dora and Friends: Into the City! showed her as a pre-teen living in a town, with a phone instead of a map. In 2019 a live-action film, Dora and the Lost City of Gold, sent a teenage Dora into the jungle to find a lost Inca city, with Boots and Swiper as animated characters. And in 2024 a new animated series, simply called Dora, brought her back to the rainforest as the young explorer most children know, backpack, map and all.

That is why parents and children often picture a slightly different Dora. These pages draw the classic one: the bob haircut, the backpack and the monkey in red boots, recognizable to both generations.

Dora's colors

The characters are easy to recognize once the colors are right:

• Dora has short dark brown hair in a bob with bangs, brown eyes, a pink T-shirt, orange shorts, white socks and yellow shoes, with a yellow bracelet.
• Backpack is purple with a yellow face on the front pocket.
• Boots is a light brown monkey with a paler face and belly, and his famous red boots.
• Baby Jaguar is golden yellow with black spots.
• The toucan has a black body and a huge orange, yellow and green beak.

Easy pages and busy jungle scenes

The simplest pages have one big character and little around them: Dora's portrait, Boots in his hammock, the chibi Boots on his banana. Quick to color, above the grid, begins with:

• Dora portrait with a flower
• Boots napping in a hammock
• Jungle leaf border

The dense ones are thick with jungle, leaves, vines and flowers everywhere. Lots of detail begins with:

• Making music with maracas
• Dora climbing a pyramid
• Dora helping Baby Jaguar

Draw the Map for your own adventure

Map is the most important helper in the show: he always shows the three places Dora must pass through to reach her goal. Children can make their own. Pick three pages that go together, say the rope bridge, the river and the pyramid, color them, and lay them in a row on the floor or tape them along a wall. Then draw a dotted path linking them on a long strip of paper and add a finish line. Walk the route together, singing the stops out loud, the way Map does: bridge, river, pyramid.

The border page is the perfect cover for the adventure: write the child's name in the middle and let them draw where the journey ends.

Printing an expedition

Every Dora page is a free PDF drawn on A4 at 300 dpi. Print at full size on A4, or with "fit to page" on US Letter, which trims the drawing by about six percent and keeps every vine on the sheet. The printing guide shows where the setting is. Add to pack gathers a whole adventure into one file. More monkeys are in the monkey coloring pages, and other favorites for young viewers in the Peppa Pig coloring pages, the Paw Patrol coloring pages and the Bluey coloring pages.