The Day The Crayons Quit

Product Information

Not only stands on its own merit, but may be even more colorful than the original.”—Huffington Post A brilliant, colorful tale that begs to be read aloud and a must-have for all collections.”—School Library Journal,starred review The earnest gravity of the fighters’ quests paired with the mundane setting and melodramatic tone are perfectly balanced to produce a brand of purely absurd, sidesplitting humor that kids will gobble up.” While walking into my living room one morning, cup of coffee in hand, I saw that my pug dog Sam had thrown up all over the rug. Sam, you see, loved to eat things he shouldn’t eat, and then throw them up in as many hidden little places around the house as he could, like some kind of awful aberration of the Easter Bunny.

Mr. Daywalt’s text blends with Mr. Jeffers’s illustrations to make a picture book that will have children clamoring for more crayon adventures.”—The Wall Street Journal Continues its predecessor’s pleasing, goofy conceit…Once again, both Daywalt’s text and Jeffers’ illustrations are endearing.”—New York Times Book Review I stood there looking at the not-quite-a-rainbow-mess in disgust, when my wife looked over and saw my expression, and asked what was wrong. Stop the presses--the best new Children's book of 2013 is in and it is "The Day the Crayons Quit", no arguments. The hilarious, colorful #1New York Timesbestselling phenomenon that every kid wants! Gift a copy to someone you love today.Cheeky humor and prideful asides will have listeners in stitches. A closer-to-perfect pairing couldn’t be imagined. Everyone wins!” A masterwork of humor and design . . . Sure to be as popular asThe Day the Crayons Quit.”—Booklist,starred review

Laugh-out-loud funny and outrageous at times, this read-aloud will have listeners jumping out of their seats. This is the sort of story that makes children love to read.” I also quite liked the message from the little boy Duncan's perspective. He was asked to change his habits to make his beloved crayons happier, and he took their needs into consideration and changed for them - and the experience was rewarding for all. I love the message of the book, even though it is extremely didactic, and the humor and the pictures are wonderful. This book was mentioned in a conversation here on Goodreads, with a link to a reading on Youtube, so I watched it. And I kinda loved it.

Now, I have been looking around for some picture books that were heavily raved about by various readers and I just happened to stumble upon this unique book called “The Day the Crayons Quit” by Drew Daywalt along with illustrations by Oliver Jeffers. Honestly, this book was truly creative and interesting to read all the way through! By telling stories from the points of view of crayons, giving voices to the small and ignored, Daywalt and Jeffers have created two books that offer plenty of charm and fun, but also make children feel deeply understood.”—The Boston Globe

But here’s an interesting thing to ponder: There’s this book from 1997 called The Crayon Box That Talked (Shane Derolf/Michael Letzig). It’s also about a box of crayons that don’t get along, are complaining about each other and refuse to work together. Sound familiar? Except when their owner draws a picture, the crayons see how beautiful the others are and even more so when they all color together. It’s not funny or snarky or clever. It’s sweet. I mean, hey, it’s about diversity and appreciating how different we all are. Makes you want to hug and get all Kumbaya-ya. But then I saw them, like a beacon on a hill… there, on my desk, sat an ancient box of my old crayons next to the hula girl pen holder my grandpa had left me in his will. I didn’t remember buying the crayons, or even why I had them. I didn’t have kids yet, so they were definitely my crayons. And at the time, I couldn’t for the life of me remember the last time I had colored. Crayons are so ubiquitous, aren’t they? They just show up everywhere, under couch cushions, behind the dresser, in the junk drawer. But here was a box I’d aparently kept with me, moving them with all my office stuff from apartment to apartment. So yeah… there they were. And I just knew they had a story to tell. The reason why I gave this book a four star rating was because even though the story was pretty interesting, the letters that the crayons wrote to Duncan tend to be extremely long and it made me a bit frustrated since I think that the humor in the letters still would have been there, if they were to shorten the letters down to a few sentences and still get the crayons’ points across. A Wall Street Journal Best Children’s Book of 2015 / A TIME Magazine Top 10 Children’s Book of 2015 I’d been writing dialogue for movies and TV for over ten years at that point and thought, hmm… what if I draw on my strengths? What if I gave each crayon a monologue about how they felt about my coloring habits? I bet they’d give me an earful.Winner of over 60 national and international awards, including the coveted E.B. White Read-Aloud Award The book is short, as most children's books are, so the reading was only 7 minutes long, but I almost wish that it was longer, that the pictures were shown more, and that I could really appreciate the art that these crayons produced. They give of themselves, and only ask to be appreciated and fairly used in return... but when they feel mistreated, they decide to demand better treatment. Until then, they tender their resignation. I loved the authors unique concept. So many children's books tend repeat the same themes these days. It’s scary to have a big job when you’re just a little droid on your own. But BB-8 isn’t alone for long. As he speeds across the sand, BB-8 meets all kinds of strangers who need his help. Should he do good things, as Poe always told him, or will that get in the way of his mission? And that’s how The Day The Crayons Came Home was born. After cleaning up Sam’s mess that day, I would go on to write of all the poor crayons in our life that we’ve lost, abused and broken over the years. I felt it was the least I could do for them.