The Crayon Counting Book
Pam Muñoz Ryan, author
Pam Muñoz Ryan grew up in Bakersfield, California, in the San Joaquin Valley. Her home was a smorgasbord of cultural diversity including grandparents from Aguascalientes, Mexico, who migrated to the United States. Pam wrote about her grandmother’s journey in her best-selling book, Esperanza Rising (Scholastic). And on her father’s side of the family, her Portuguese-speaking Basque grandfather traveled to California from Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl. When spending time at one grandparent’s home, Pam and her sisters spoke Spanish and ate tortillas, beans, enchiladas, red molé, and lamb. When with the other, they enjoyed black-eyed peas, fried okra, biscuits and gravy, and smothered greens.
Read more about Pam.
Frank Mazzola, Jr., illustrator
Frank Mazzola, Jr. is the author/illustrator of Counting Is for the Birds and the illustrator of The Ocean Alphabet Book and The Crayon Counting Book. He received his B.A. in studio art from the College of Wooster in Ohio. Frank combines traditional painting techniques with computer technologies to create his amazing illustrations. He lives in Massachusetts with his wife, Cindy, where they watch the birds that feed at their five bird feeders.
Read more about Frank.
- ILA/CBC Children's Choices
Publishers Weekly
In a high-tech approach to a low-tech subject, computer-generated crayons strike different poses on each page of this surprisingly animated counting book. The crayons appear in rows, pyramids and pairs do-si-do-ing in a line; they stand on their heads and lie in piles. The rhyming text counts by twos, first by even numbers ("A set of twins joins the color scheme,/ which brings the count to precisely sixteen"), then by odds ("Seventeen pastels, delicate and light/ Nineteen hotshots, bold and bright"). While the reader is ostensibly counting crayons from a box of 24, she must suspend disbelief: obviously there would not be 11 greens (with names like "iguana," "wasabi" and "emerald tree boa"), much less 15 blues, within a particular assortment. It's a slight book, but a colorful one.
Paperback
ISBN: 9780881069532
E-book
ISBN: 9781632895219 EPUB
ISBN: 9781607342144 PDF
Ages: 2-5
Page count: 32
11 x 8 1/2