About the Holiday
If the aroma of crayons takes you back to your childhood or means that you know your kids are having fun and being creative, then today’s holiday is for you! Invented in 1902 by Edwin Binney, the Crayola crayon is a staple of young artists everywhere. With 120 different colors. many with imaginative names, everyone has a favorite color. What’s yours?
I received a copy of The Forgotten Crayon from Minedition for review consideration. All opinions on the book are my own.
By Jakki Licare
The Forgotten Crayon
By Yoko Maruyama
Twelve brand new crayons are waiting at the store for someone to choose them. They are excited to find out who their new owner will be. The crayons are thrilled when they feel their box moving. They are finally going home. In his room, their new owner, Lucas, opens the lid and smiles down at the crayons.
Lucas uses a light green crayon to color grass. Then, he uses a brown crayon to draw a tree. Using the dark green and pink crayons, he adds in flowers and leaves for a springtime picture. “Those three crayons returned to the box a little shorter, but they seemed very happy.”
When summer comes, Lucas draws an ocean with a light blue crayon and makes a sail boat with the dark blue crayon. Even though the crayons are shorter, they return to the box happy. Fall comes and Lucas makes a Halloween picture using the orange, red, yellow, and black crayons. Happy to have been chosen, the crayons return to their box. “Day after day Lucas colored picture after picture, but he never chose the white crayon.”
Around winter time, Lucas tells his mom that he would like a new box of crayons. The white crayon, towering over his shorter boxmates is very upset that he was never used. One day Lucas’s family holds a yard sale, and the old box of crayons is put out with the rest of the unwanted items. People come by taking this and that, but nobody is interested in the crayons. Lucas’s mother tells him that if no one takes them then they will throw away the crayons.
“As it grew later and darker, the crayons started to feel so sad they were near to tears.” Just when they feel certain they are going to be thrown out, a little girl opens them up. She is so excited. There is a brand-new white crayon in the box! “She cradled the old crayon box all the way home.”
Their new owner, Olivia, always starts her pictures with a white crayon. Then, using water colors, she paints the paper. The white crayon’s wax prevents the watercolors from sticking to it. So, wherever Olivia had used the white crayon, it remains white. She paints white stars in the sky, blue seas with white jellyfish, and forests with white unicorns. When the first snow of the year comes, “Olivia drew a picture using mostly the white crayon.” Returning to the box, the white crayon is now much shorter and all the crayons are happy.
Yoko Maruyama’s soft-toned illustrations nicely complement her gentle narrative. The story starts off in a dark, quiet box where the colorful, tall, and happy crayons are waiting to be bought at the store. Her hopeful words, “Their hearts were filled with expectation,” start the story off on a happy and peaceful note. The book ends with the crayons in the dark box once again, but this time they are all shorter and happy to have been chosen.
The message of inclusivity is a beautiful theme woven throughout the book. Maruyama returns to the inside of the box several times, illustrating how the white crayon is the only crayon that doesn’t get used. The tall white crayon sticks out compared to the more colorful and shorter crayons. The white crayon’s simplistic sad face makes it easy for young readers to understand that the white crayon is sad from being excluded. Then, later Maruyama shows the white crayon smiling along with the rest of the crayons, shorter and happier from being included.
While a third of the book’s illustration take place inside the crayon box, Maruyama has created a beautiful tale about thinking outside the box. Olivia’s unique way of using the white crayon’s wax is very different from the way Lucas had created 