The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt

Hey, Story Seekers!

We have a labor dispute.

Red is exhausted. Blue has had enough of oceans. Black is tired of being the outline guy. Yellow and Orange are not speaking.

And Peach has lost his wrapper and would rather not discuss it in public.

We're exploring The Day the Crayons Quit, written by Drew Daywalt and illustrated by Oliver Jeffers.

Readit has begun examining my desk.

"Your yellow highlighter looks tired."

It's a highlighter.

"That's what Duncan thought."

Book Breakdown

Duncan wants to color. Simple plan.

He opens the box and the crayons are gone. In their place is a stack of letters.

They have complaints. Many complaints.

Red is worn out from fire engines, apples and Santas. Gray is physically exhausted because Duncan has decided one crayon should handle elephants, rhinos and hippos, which is an enormous amount of acreage. Beige is tired of playing second fiddle to Brown. Black wants a job other than outlining. White feels invisible. Pink just wants to be used at all. Blue needs a break from all that water.

Yellow and Orange are locked in a bitter dispute over which of them is the true color of the sun.

And Peach, whose wrapper has been peeled off, is refusing to leave the box because he is naked.

That's a genuine workplace concern.

What makes it work is that Daywalt gives each crayon a distinct voice and grievance, and then Oliver Jeffers makes each complaint verifiable. The letters are handwritten in the crayon's own color. The facing page shows the evidence.

Gray doesn't just say he's tired. You see the enormous gray animals.

White's problem lands because you see what white crayon on white paper actually achieves.

Not much.

The pictures aren't decoration here. They're exhibits.

And Duncan's solution isn't a speech. He draws one big picture that gives everybody something different to do, and that's the end of the strike.

Peach still wants his wrapper back.

For teachers and librarians: Lexile AD730L (the AD means adult directed, so it's built to be read aloud) · ATOS 3.8 · 999 words · AR Quiz 159597 · 0.5 points. Philomel Books, June 27, 2013. Forty pages, ages 4 to 8.

Winner of the Goodreads Choice Award for picture books in 2013 and an E.B. White Read-Aloud Award winner. At 999 words it's a longer sit than it looks.

Jungle Jimmy's Journal

Same author as The Legend of Rock Paper Scissors, and it's worth knowing what Drew Daywalt did before picture books. He wrote cartoons in Hollywood for Disney and Universal, and his animated series The Wacky World of Tex Avery picked up an Emmy nomination.

That background shows up here as structure. This book is a sketch revue. Eight or nine short bits, each with its own character and its own complaint, each landing and getting out.

Which means the first thing to do is give the crayons different voices.

You almost have to. Daywalt already did the hard part. Red doesn't sound like Beige. Black has a completely different problem from Blue. Yellow and Orange are conducting their own feud in the middle of everybody else's.

You've been handed a cast. Go play.

But the thing I like most isn't the voices.

The crayons aren't asking Duncan to stop using them.

They want him to use them differently.

That's a much better idea than it first appears. Black doesn't want to quit being black. Black wants to draw something other than outlines. White wants to be visible once in a while. Pink wants a turn.

None of them are saying "leave me alone."

They're saying: you decided what I'm for, and I'm tired of it.

Kids get that faster than adults do. Tell a child the sky has to be blue and there's a decent chance you're about to receive a purple sky, specifically because you opened your mouth.

Good.

And Duncan's answer isn't a lecture. He just draws differently. The book trusts a picture to make the argument, which is exactly right for a book about pictures.

There's also some quiet perspective-taking in here that never announces itself. Every crayon believes its complaint is the important one, because to that crayon it is. Duncan has to listen to all of them.

Even the ridiculous sun argument.

Especially the ridiculous sun argument.

That's closer to real life than most books aimed at four-year-olds get. Sometimes the answer isn't deciding who's right. Sometimes you draw a green dinosaur and everybody calms down.

Readit's Review

Peach wins.

Wins what?

"The book."

Why?

"He's NAKED."

He's a crayon.

"He knows."

Fair.

Also Gray has the worst job in the box. Elephants. Rhinos. Hippos. Those are ENORMOUS.

Give some of that to Black. Black wants more work anyway. Problem solved. I fixed the crayon box.

And Yellow and Orange are both right about the sun, because sometimes it looks yellow and sometimes it looks orange, so that fight could have ended on page one.

Adults make things complicated.

They're crayons.

"You're a grown-up."

Yes.

"Exactly."

What Others Think

Thirteen years in, this book has had plenty of time to be found out.

Goodreads has it at 4.42 out of 5 from 60,868 ratings and 5,826 reviews. That's the largest pool of any book we've reviewed, and 85 percent of it sits at four or five stars with only three percent at one or two. Numbers that big are hard to fake and hard to argue with.

It also won the Goodreads Choice Award for picture books the year it came out, which is a readers' vote rather than a committee.

The recurring praise is always the same two things: the personalities, and how well it performs. Adults report doing a different voice for every crayon. Kids adopt a favorite and defend it. And the ending sends everybody off to draw something, which is about the best exit a picture book can manage.

The most interesting criticism is a craft one, and it's worth taking seriously.

One reviewer wondered exactly who some of the jokes are for, noting that several read as too snarky for young children and suspecting the book is partly engineered to make the adult laugh.

I think that's half right, and I don't mind it. A book that rewards the reader as well as the listener is why a parent agrees to a ninth reading. But if you're picking this for a three-year-old expecting them to catch every joke, they won't, and that's fine.

The other complaint is practical and I'd never have thought of it: the letters are handwritten in crayon, and crayon on colored paper is genuinely hard to read in dim light.

So this is not your one-tiny-night-light book.

Turn on a lamp. The crayons have demands.

Belly Laugh Scale

4 out of 5: Big-Time Belly Laughs

A four, and not because every letter is a knee-slapper. They aren't.

The laughs come from character. Gray physically worn out by large mammals. Black lobbying for a promotion. Yellow and Orange presenting evidence in the great sun dispute. Peach refusing to come out of the box.

Jeffers gets these jokes across with almost nothing. A crayon has no face, and you still know precisely how fed up it is.

What keeps it off the five is the shape. It's a series of letters rather than a story with a build, so it produces a steady run of chuckles rather than one enormous laugh. A kid who doesn't connect with the individual crayons will start feeling the pattern before Duncan gets to his solution.

But when a kid meets the right crayon, it really lands.

Four out of five. Big-Time Belly Laughs.

Peach has filed an appeal.

Final Explorer Verdict

It earns the reputation. Ages 4 to 8, and it's one of the great modern read-alouds because you get a whole box of characters to perform.

Teachers have somewhere to go afterward that isn't a worksheet. Write a complaint letter from another object in the room. Argue the case for Yellow or Orange. Draw something using entirely the wrong colors on purpose.

Or just hand them crayons. That's allowed too, and it's what the book is really asking for.

Oliver Jeffers deserves half the credit and usually gets less. Daywalt gives the crayons something to complain about; Jeffers makes you see why they're so worked up. Take the pictures away and this book stops working entirely.

One practical note from that 999-word count: it's longer than it looks, and the letters keep coming. For a wriggly four-year-old, you're allowed to skip a crayon. I won't tell.

If your kid says books are boring, this one's structure is a good way in, since each letter is short and the next one is right there. I rounded up fifteen books for reluctant readers here.

For a follow-up from my own shelf, Little Jimmy Says, "Same Is Lame" runs on the same fuel. It's about not squeezing yourself into somebody else's idea of what you're supposed to be, which is more or less what Black, Pink and White have been trying to tell Duncan the whole time.

Readit?

"Yeah?"

What's your favorite crayon?

"Purple."

Why?

"Purple."

Can't argue with that.

Keep exploring, Story Seekers!

Jungle Jimmy & Readit