The Day the Crayons Quit

Drew Daywalt gives the reader a unique perspective on crayons in his debut picture book, The Day the Crayons Quit. Each crayon has its own voice, and uses it to express his or her own feelings in its own color.  One day Duncan opens his crayon box and instead of crayons, he finds letters written to him by each crayon.  The crayons are fed up with traditional color stereotypes.  Why do apples have to be red, and water blue? Is the sun yellow or orange? Pink is upset that Duncan doesn’t use her at all because he thinks she’s a girl’s color. And what about the almost invisible white and poor naked beige? They all have feelings and they’re all tired of being taken for granted. By the end of the story, Duncan decides to rethink the color possibilities and draws an orange whale and a blue dinosaur in a green sea,  a purple dragon under a black rainbow, a green monkey and a pink airplane, just to name a few.  His teacher gives him an A+ for creativity.

I give Drew Daywalt an A+ for his debut picture book!  In addition to being fun, it also has deeper layers of stereotypes, prejudices, and personality for the more sophisticated reader to explore.

And, of course it never hurts to have an awesome illustrator like the renown Oliver Jeffers bringing your words to life. Based on the sales so far, The Day the Crayons Quit has become an instant success and destined to be a classic picture book.

To see a video of The Day the Crayons Quit, go here.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDBTwtEuY24

To read about Crayola Crayon Day go here.

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