On The Inside

Labels are helpful when wanting to know the ingredients in a particular food product, how often to take a specific medicine, or the needed number of applications for a foolproof fertilizer for the lawn and garden.  These labels are designed to inform and protect. When labels are given to people rather than things their value diminishes.

Even if the label for someone is good, it might tend to stop us from truly knowing them.  If we are told over and over we are one thing, it might be hard to uncover who we are and how best to use our gifts.  Red: A Crayon's Story (Greenwillow Books, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, February 3, 2015) written and illustrated by Michael Hall follows a crayon's journey to self-discovery.

He was red

So says pencil, chief narrator of this tale.  For reasons obvious to the reader or listener Red lacks the ability to be as the paper wrap suggests he should be.  Everything he draws is blue.

His teacher believes practice is the answer.  His strawberries look like weird-shaped blueberries.  His mother tries her best by encouraging Red to mix with others like Yellow.  She is hoping to see a nice orange orange.  It's not quite ripe yet.

Silver and Gray, Red's grandparents, make him a gift of a scarf to ward off the chill they are certain he is feeling.  It's going to take more than apparel to make this crayon red.  It seems every crayon in the box has an opinion but nothing seems to work.  Even when other members of the art table, tape, scissors and a sharpener, get involved the result is the same.  What Red reads is not what Red sees.

But...on a very special day, a day Red will always remember, a new pal in the pack, Berry, asks Red to color the ocean beneath the boat.  Red denies he can do it because he is red after all but with Berry's encouragement Red draws wavy water.  And it's blue.  And it's easy for Red to do!

Red can't stop now; everything he creates is correctly colored.  Pencil and the box crowd change their words as fast as a finger snap.  His teacher finally understands uttering a prophetic truth.


With those first three words Michael Hall captures our undivided attention; conflicting with the image seen, a bright blue crayon wrapped in a Red crayon label.  With nearly all the narrative phrases he includes comments from another crayon or group of crayons adding an emotional layer to his story.  These candid observations readily define their personalities.  Here is a sample combination.

His mother thought he needed
to mix with other colors.

Why don't
you two
go out
and draw
a nice,
round
orange.

A really
big one. (Yellow)

A really
orange
one! (Red)


Opening the dust jacket of the F & G the solid blue on the front carries across to the left and extends into each flap.  The comments of the orange and yellow crayons at the bottom on the front announce the contrast between the color and the color tag.  On the back the berry and purple crayons make comments foreshadowing the story's outcome.  The blue used in Red on the front is used again on the title page.  A stark white background provides a canvas for the pencil's words

As told by me!

 written in gray on black paper taped to the page.  In the lower left corner a portion of scissors can be seen near scraps of black paper.  This is clearly a story told by items of interest to artists.

The illustrations are placed on either a black or white background with lots of empty space drawing readers' eyes toward the individual elements and the text.  All drawings made by Red, Scarlet, Yellow, the other students in class, and Berry look as if they have been drawn using crayons.  Simple but purposeful in layout, the perspective does not shift except at the explicit turning point.

One of my favorite illustrations is for the phrase

But he didn't catch on.

Green draws a

Green frog!

Black draws a

Black sheep!

 Brown draws a

Brown cow! 

Red draws an ant that is blue.  For his text we read...

Red...
aaack!


If you've ever felt like a square peg trying to fit into a round hole, Red:  A Crayon's Story written and illustrated by Michael Hall is a perfect pick.  It's a story highlighting the journey necessary to find your true self.  It's about that one person who might help you make the discovery.  This is a story when shared will be appreciated by any age.  Wonderful!

If you are interested in learning about Michael Hall and his other work please visit his website by following the link attached to his name.  This link takes you to the book trailer reveal by author, New York Public Library's Youth Materials Collection Specialist and blogger at A Fuse #8 Production, Elizabeth Bird.  Here is a link to 7 Reasons Why Your Child's Bookshelf Needs RED courtesy of the publisher.  My posts for his other titles, Perfect Square and It's An Orange Aardvark can be read by following the links.  

Colorful Complaints

Among all the papers, embellishments, ribbons, letters, pencils, pens, stamps and doodads I use for making my own greeting cards, is an unused box of 96 crayons. When I open the lid the smell is laden with decades of memories of many other boxes of crayons used with pleasure.  The colors, lined up at attention in rows, are a rainbow of possibilities.

Any size box of crayons offers endless potential for recreating what we see, doodling or filling in the spaces in our favorite coloring books. In my kindergarten years I never drew a picture without a rainbow tucked in somewhere.  To this day I have to stop to look whenever I see one stretched across the sky reminding me they are like opening a box of crayons.

You have to appreciate an author who imagines how the crayons in a box might feel about their individual treatment. The Day the Crayons Quit (Philomel Books, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.) by Drew Daywalt with illustrations by Oliver Jeffers finds twelve crayons in a bit of a dither.  In fact they are so upset they decide to take matters into their own... er...hands.

One day in class, Duncan went
to take out his crayons and found
a stack of letters with his name
on them.

To his surprise (I'm sure), the letters were from his crayons.  The first to air his frustrations is the color red, believing he works harder than the others.  He's absolutely pooped from all the pressure of his efforts on holidays.  No other color is used in the creation of the red-suited guy at Christmas or in all those hearts on Valentine's Day.

Who knew a crayon would nitpick about someone staying within the lines?  Not calling a color by its proper name can send them into a deep depression.  Not using them enough makes a bad situation even worse.

Gray is ever hopeful for smaller subjects to color; he finds whales, elephants and hippos exhausting.  Grumbling with just cause, white and black make solid points; why is the one rarely seen and the other usually seen as a line of varying widths.  One of the calmer, cool as a cucumber crayons, has a concern about two others bickering about the color of the sun.  Needless to say they both have written to Duncan, stating their claims in no uncertain terms.

Being a favorite color is no fun either.  You end up being rather diminished in the height department.  And what about the color that would never be used if it wasn't for Duncan's sister?  Where is Duncan's freedom of expression?  Clever and kindhearted guy that he is, Duncan's resolution is picture perfect but tape or glue might have been needed to fix peach's problem.


Lucky for we readers, it would appear Drew Daywalt has the very special gift of being able to speak and understand "crayon".  Every thought expressed by each of these colors is exactly what we might expect them to say.  Their range of emotional unhappiness or contentedness, in the case of green, is precisely and concisely stated.

It's the word choices, the emphasis, which will make readers laugh.  Even though the crayons are not pleased with Duncan each signs their letter as your _____ friend or your _____ pal.  Here are a couple of sentences from one of the letters.  Can you guess the color?

I'm not even in the rainbow.
I'm only used to color
SNOW or to fill in empty
space between other things.
And it leaves me feeling...
...well...empty.  We need
to talk.


You know you're in for some great artwork with liberal amounts of humorous touches when you read this in the publication information.

The art for this book was made with...um...crayons.

Fully animated, disgruntled, sign-carrying crayons on pieces of lined composition paper displayed across the matching, front and back, jacket and cover give a clear indication of events to come.  Miniature crayons patterned on the opening and closing endpapers continue the theme as does the title page; a single box of crayons closed with several signs lying near, one reading

We're not happy

Each of the letters is depicted on the left-hand side of a two page spread written in the correct color of the crayon having their say.  Different shaped, different styles of, paper provide the backdrop for the letters. If you were looking inside a student's desk at school, this is the kind of paper you might find there.

The childlike drawings on the right-hand side along with the cranky crayons are flawless, lively.  I can't help but wonder if the coloring book pages are real or from the hand of  Oliver Jeffers; the illustrations for this title couldn't be better.  It's a draw as to whether the red pages or the gray pages are my favorite.


I've been saving the reading of The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt with illustrations by Oliver Jeffers for the perfect day.  Yesterday was that day.  I knew it was going to be good but I had no idea how truly playful it would be.  I've read it over and over to myself and aloud.  Voices for each of the colors make it even better.

Please follow the link embedded in Oliver Jeffers name to access his personal website.  This is a link to the International Reading Association site containing an article, Putting Books to Work: Daywalt and Jeffers' THE DAY THE CRAYONS QUIT   In case you have not seen the video about Oliver Jeffers yet, I've included it below.