The Crayon Box that Talked

October 20, 1997
Discord among the denizens of a box of crayons leads to a lesson about tolerance and respect in this jaunty, if didactic, picture book. The various colors lodged on the toy-store shelf express their dislike for one another and lament that "Something here is wrong!" When a girl overhears the crayons' remarks, she decides to take them home and set things right. She lays out her new drawing tools and creates a scene using all the colors, until the crayons realize, "when we get together.../ The picture is complete." Although the outcome of DeRolf's rhyming poem is predictable, the story effectively presents the difficult concepts of individuality and unity for young children. Letzig's illustrations are appropriately saturated with a rainbow of hues. His round-faced human figures and kitschy, decorative backgrounds have a stylized zing that the main characters--pointy-headed, anthropomorphic crayons--lack. All ages. (Oct.) FYI: The text of this book has become the cornerstone for both the Advertising Council's 1997 antidiscrimination public service message campaign and a Crayon Box licensing venture between Random House and PolyGram that includes television programming, books, toys and videos.

January 22, 1998
PreS-Gr 2-In this mawkish, didactic tale (a tie-in book to the TV show The Crayon Box), quarrelsome talking crayons learn to appreciate one another when the narrator draws with them, thus showing them how each helps create a bigger picture. The message of the book, to learn to appreciate rather than dislike other people's differences, is conveyed Limburger-strong (and just as cheesy) through the unremarkable rhyming text. The illustrator uses a cartoonish, faux-childlike style and a cross-hatched layering technique to create pictures that are busy rather than vivid. The lack of borders and use of matte paper make them appear crammed into the pages. The colors (especially an overused Pepto-Bismol pink and a ruined-in-the-laundry white) are distracting. Skip this cloying book in favor of Patricia Hubbard's breezy My Crayons Talk (Holt, 1996), which gets the childlike art right and spares readers the weight of the Big Important Message.-July Siebecker, Hubbard Memorial Library, MA