The Day the Crayons Quit
A teacher’s look at why this book belongs in the The Why-Askers stage.
Why it fits The Why-Askers (for preschoolers whose every page sparks a question)
Duncan's crayons write him letters of complaint. Point-of-view is the joke: even a crayon has feelings and grievances. Sparks both giggles and surprisingly deep questions about fairness.
What makes it special
Daywalt's conceit — supplies with grievances — turns point-of-view into the joke itself. Jeffers' crayon-scrawl letters look convincingly like each color wrote its own complaint. Under the laughs sits a real question about fairness and being taken for granted, pitched perfectly at the age that polices fairness hardest.
From the publisher
When Duncan arrives at school one morning, he finds a stack of letters, one from each of his crayons, complaining about how he uses…
About Drew Daywalt
Drew Daywalt was a Hollywood screenwriter and director — of horror shorts, improbably — before The Day the Crayons Quit spent over five years on the New York Times bestseller list and made him the master of inanimate-object comedy.
The crayon letters sat in a drawer for a decade of rejections; Daywalt has said he wrote them after wondering, staring at a worn crayon box between film projects, which color hated its job most.
Also by this author: The Day the Crayons Came Home · The Legend of Rock Paper Scissors
More from “What If and Why Not”
This book is part of The Best Books for Preschoolers: 30 Teacher Picks (The Why-Askers) in our guide The Best Children’s Books by Age — 120 books chosen by the Montessori-certified teachers at Creative Minds Montessori in Frisco, TX. Come see how we build readers →
Nobody paid for this review — not the author, not the publisher — and the store link above earns us nothing. Our only interest is the reader this book fits.