Philomel Books The Day the Crayons Quit

Kids enjoy reading it

Very good book for kids

I read this book once and won't read it again. My main reason is that pink is my two year old son's favourite colour and when you get to the letter from the pink crayon it goes on about the emphasis of pink being purely a girls colour for girly things. Way way behind the times and damaging! The letters are very sarcastic and quite rude and abrupt, very much adult humour. There's no moral or education or really a story. The only plus is that some adults may be more inclined to read to their kids as this book is very much aimed at those parents who don't like reading to their young children.

I love this book so much I own it as a picture book and a board book! The letters from the crayons are sheer genius and will have you laughing out loud – they are exactly the letters I would expect if crayons could speak. So much so, it makes me forget crayons can’t talk! This is a book I know I will be re-reading for years to come.The main section of this book features one letter per spread along with a drawing depicting the crayon’s problem. Jeffers’ illustrations are simply perfect and every crayon’s issue rings true with how children use crayons. None more so for me than Peach crayon who is in hiding after Duncan pealed off its paper wrapping!

Absolutely great book I purchased on the recommendation of a friend who works in a library. I loved it the first 11 times I read it to nephews at bed time. Bought the sequel to avoid temporary insanity from re-reading the same book too many times in a short space of time. Seriously, these kids have a whole bookcase to choose from when they visit me, but no matter where I hid this book they still found it.As for the story itself, it's very well written, a great idea supported fantastically by the illustrations. If you do unique voices for each colour be sure to remember which crayon has which voice next time you read it, otherwise you'll be constantly interrupted by cries of "This is green not brown!"The only downside is that the style of writing on the letters makes it difficult for my 6 year old nephew to join in the reading, he's great at typed text but struggles with the crayon font.

The idea is full of potential: a boy receives letters from each of his crayons expressing their discontent (for apparent various reaasons, but in reality it s always the same 2: too much use or not enough). I remember creating background stories for my coloring pens and pencils when I was a child, and they included a lot more options... At the end, the boy tries to please his crayons (laudable) by making a drawing with all of them, but I challenge anyone to find Grey (and poor peach is a stretch, too).The language seems more suitable for 8 or older.The illustrations look and feel like they were made directly on the page by real crayons, which gives it a nice touch (pun intended).All in all, I think I'll use the idea but tell each letter differently, perhaps with some actual stories.

The Day the Crayons Quit is a fun and unique story of a box of crayons who write letters to Duncan as they are fed up with how they are being treated. I like how we got to see each of the crayons perspectives of what they believe they are stereotypically used for and I think this was all very familiar to the children. Having this shown in letters to Duncan from each of the colour crayons is a fun way to get their point across but it wasn't something all the children enjoyed and with some of the children being quite young I think it was too long and in some cases humour in which I think the younger children didn't understand which meant they lost interest. For the older children it was mostly enjoyed though and they loved seeing all of the illustrations that went along with the letters of a page of that specific colour which was great to see if they could recognise the colours before the letter was read to them. The characters in this book are just the crayons but I love how their personalities are based on the uses they have to children and ones that children will recognise. The children found peach to be particularly amusing and found that part of the story very funny and silly! The children loved the end of the book and seeing the fantastic picture created with the crayons but were also fascinated at the colour choices, I like that this showed them that we don't have to do the same as everyone else and that we can use our imagination and be different! Overall I think their opinion on this book was divided, the younger children weren't too keen but the older ones loved it. A great story regardless though and a brilliantly subtle way of helping children learn their colours!