The Day the Crayons Quit

K-Gr 2—In this delightfully imaginative take on a beloved childhood activity, a young boy's crayons have had enough. Fed up with their workload and eager to voice their grievances, they pen letters to Duncan detailing their frustrations. Energetic and off-the-wall, the complaints are always wildly funny, from the neurotically neat Purple ("If you DON'T START COLORING INSIDE the lines soon… I'm going to COMPLETELY LOSE IT") to the underappreciated White ("If I didn't have a black outline, you wouldn't even know I was THERE!"). Daywalt has an instinctive understanding of the kind of humor that will resonate with young children, such as Orange and Yellow duking it out over which of them represents the true color of the sun or Peach's lament that ever since its wrapper has fallen off, it feels naked. Though Jeffers's messily scrawled crayon illustrations are appropriately childlike, they're also infused with a sophisticated wit that perfectly accompanies the laugh-out-loud text; for example, a letter from Beige, in which he bemoans being tasked with drawing dull items like turkey dinners, is paired with an image of the crestfallen crayon drooping over beside a blade of wheat. Later on, Pink grumbles about constantly being passed over for less-feminine colors while the opposite page depicts a discomfited-looking pink monster and cowboy being derided by a similarly hued dinosaur. This colorful title should make for an uproarious storytime and may even inspire some equally creative art projects.—Mahnaz Dar, Library Journal