The Day the Crayons Quit

The Day the Crayons Quit | Fantasy | Drew Daywalt | Bluebonnet; Amazon’s 2013 Best Picture Book of the Year; A Barnes & Noble Best Book of 2013; Goodreads’ 2013 Best Picture Book of the Year | ages 3-6 |

“When Duncan showed his teacher his new picture, she gave him an A for coloring… and an A+ for creativity!”

Duncan is getting ready to color with his crayons when he sees a bunch of letters piled up for him. The letters have each written a letter for Duncan explaining how they feel. Red feels he is being used a lot and works on all holidays. He wants a break. Black feels he is rarely used, and demands to be more than outliner. And pink feels is also not used because Duncan may feel pink is just for girls. All the colors have written their feelings and after reading all the letters from each crayon, Duncan decides to do something about it to make them all feel happy. In the end, Duncan is able to draw a big picture according to all the crayons' wants and the teacher gives him an A for coloring and an A for creativity. 

This book is a great use for preschool to second grade, learning about crayons and writing letters! For this reason I will use this book in my future classroom. Throughout the book, you can discuss with your students the colors of the crayons and what are the things you color with them. Afterwards, have them simply create art projects with their crayons. And if your students are at the age where they can write or are learning to write formal letters, have them practice writing letters based on the examples from the book. To change things up, you can have your students write the letters from the point of view of the crayons to themselves.