The Day The Crayons Quit
Book Review  

Uh Oh!  I was at the book store!!!!!!!  I read this book - The Day the Crayons Quit by Crew Daywalt while there! It is GREAT!

It promotes the idea that we need to let children be creative with color and in art!

Want to learn more about creating a great library area? Visit my Preschool Library Interest Center page

The Day the Crayons Quit Book Review

by Drew Daywalt

ISBN 978-0399255373

The Day the Crayons Quit

In this story, each crayon from the crayon box writes a note to the child who owns the box of crayons. And there are some issues!

Yellow and Orange are fighting about which one really is the color of the sun, etc. Some crayons complain of not being used enough and others complain about being used too much.  The story ends with an awesome drawing by the child who uses all colors for all things! 

The illustrations are wonderful!  They truly appear to be drawn by a child.  In addition, the notes the crayons leave are also wonderful and seem almost three dimensional!

This book was named Amazon Best Children's Book of 2013 and I can see why!  Here is their review:

The Day the Crayons Quit

"Drew Daywalt’s clever story of a box of crayons gone rogue will get the whole family laughing at the letters written by the occupants of the ubiquitous yellow and green box.

The combination of text and Oliver Jeffers' illustrations match the colors' personalities beautifully as the crayons share their concern, appreciation, or downright frustration: 

yellow and orange demand to know the true color of the sun, while green--clearly the people pleaser of the bunch--is happy with his workload of crocodiles, trees, and dinosaurs. Peach crayon wants to know why his wrapper was torn off, leaving him naked and in hiding; blue is exhausted and, well, worn out; and pink wants a little more paper time. The result of this letter writing campaign is colorful creativity and after reading this book I will never look at crayons the same way again--nor would I want to." ---Seira Wilson

The Day the Crayons Quit Book Review

The Day the Crayons Quit Activities

As I was reading The Day the Crayons Quit I could picture the preschoolers loving this story and also had ideas about how to include them during the reading of the story!


Story Time With Props

1.  Read the title of the book to the children and show them the cover of the book.  Ask the children what "quit" means.  Discuss why the children think the crayons might decide they do not want to work anymore and list their ideas on a large chart paper on the wall.

2.  Hang a 2nd piece of large chart paper on the wall.

3.  Give each child one crayon (use only the colors mentioned in the book).  If you have more children than the number of colors, give 2 or 3 children the same colors!  Be certain that each child has a crayon.

4.  Have the children name the color of the crayon they are each holding.  

5.  Read the story.  After you read about one crayon's issue, pause and invite the children holding that color crayon to come up to the chart paper and draw a picture of what you just read.  Now, I realize this could take a while!  So, you might want to tell the children that they have 20 seconds (or 30 or however much time you want to allow so as to give them time to draw by not so long that you lose the interest of the rest of your group).  Set a timer for that amount of time.  When the timer goes off, the child(ren) place their crayon into a basket or bin you have placed on the floor in the middle of circle.

6.  Continue this throughout the entire story.

7.  Discuss how the child solved the problems of the crayons and discuss the drawing that your children just created!

Follow up with a "The Day The Crayons Quit" Group Drawing!

In advance, cover your art table or a wall space with a LARGE sheet of paper (I'm talking HUGE...like 4 feet wide by 2 or more feet tall!).

During Interest Center Time, invite the children who come to the art table to use the crayons (you have them all in the bin from Circle Time!) to draw a picture that they think the crayons would LOVE to draw!

Hang this for the parents to see along with the book for the parents to read!

CLICK HERE to purchase The Day the Crayons Quit

Other Pages You May Be Interested In:


Read More of My Reviews at the main PRODUCT REVIEW PAGE 


Go to Preschool Plan It's Home Page


© Copyright 2010-2024 Preschool-Plan-It.com   |   All Rights Reserved   |   Privacy Policy & Disclaimer