Module 6 : The Day the Crayons Quit

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SUMMARY

In The Day the Crayons Quit a box of crayons each write letters to Dalton about why they are overused, overworked, and under-appreciated. This is a fun-loving story about how kids always use the same colors to color things. For example, fire trucks are always red, the ocean and sky are always blue, etc. At the end of the story, Dalton colors a picture using colors that are not "the norm" and he gets an "A" for creativity.

APA REFERENCE
Daywalt, D., & Jeffers, O. (n.d.). The day the crayons quit.

IMPRESSIONS

This is a quick and easy read, with a thrifty perspective from the crayons point-of-view. This book has the opportunity for many lessons to be derived and taught after reading it. The illustrations appear to be done by a small child, very amateur-like, however the details are so lovely the reader has so much to look at while reading about each individual color.

PROFESSIONAL REVIEW

Duncan wants to draw, but instead of crayons, he finds a stack of letters listing the crayons’ demands in this humorous tale.

Red is overworked, laboring even on holidays. Gray is exhausted from coloring expansive spaces (elephants, rhinos and whales). Black wants to be considered a color-in color, and Peach? He’s naked without his wrapper! This anthropomorphized lot amicably requests workplace changes in hand-lettered writing, explaining their work stoppage to a surprised Duncan. Some are tired, others underutilized, while a few want official titles. With a little creativity and a lot of color, Duncan saves the day. Jeffers delivers energetic and playful illustrations, done in pencil, paint and crayon. The drawings are loose and lively, and with few lines, he makes his characters effectively emote. Clever spreads, such as Duncan’s “white cat in the snow” perfectly capture the crayons’ conundrum, and photographic representations of both the letters and coloring pages offer another layer of texture, lending to the tale’s overall believability.

LIBRARY USES

A good library use would be a read-aloud, and then have the children work in groups, choose color without looking, and then write a letter from Dalton, back to the crayons. Once the students have completed their letter, then can illustrate their paper. The completed letters can be hung in the library for everyone to see.