The Day the Crayons Quit
So… I changed this book from the favorites category to the skip it category. As time progressed and my little one grew, and the more we read this one, the less I liked reading it to my little one. The reason being is as my little one has progressed from listening to talking I’ve learned how much we have to guide and teach my little one in how to talk. My little one has learned a great vocab and various ways to speak, some from us, some from books, and I realized as we tried to stop bad habits in my little one the crayon characters are all whiny and complain. The crayons all have a perspective and talk in a manner that we don’t want my little one to have or do.
Though I will admit, this is a really creative and well done book. The main characters in this book are the crayons. They all have different personalities, they all do things you would do with that specific color and they all have their own struggles, struggles I could picture each specific crayon having if it was animate. The illustrations are simple and cute and help communicate or demonstrate each crayon’s personality. And the story is a good length for a little one’s (and a parent’s) attention span.
Originally, I put one of the derivative or follow up books by the same author with the same characters in the “skip this one” category, but I’ve later swapped their places. I’ve said this in more than one review but doing a really good children’s book with the main character(s) being an inanimate(s) object is really difficult. This is the original crayon book (I believe at the time there is 16 total) and this book is more of a story than the derivative book, and this one is entertaining and engaging. However, because the derivative book is not a story as much as introducing the reader to the colors, it’s actually missing the conversations and the whining and complaining found in the original book, making it a great book to teach a little one about colors. If we read the follow up books, I will let each one stand on its own and try to list them all in one of the categories.
Cautions: None, unless you or your child is sensitive to things like dragons or wizards. These types of characters are a few characters the crayons draw or color.
