Drew Daywalt

Drew Daywalt (born January 5, 1970), is an American author and filmmaker. He is best known for writing the best-selling children's picture book The Day the Crayons Quit, and its sequel The Day the Crayons Came Home, both illustrated by Oliver Jeffers. Daywalt is also known for writing scripts for American television and Hollywood studio films, and for creating a number of short horror films for release on the internet.

Early life Drew Daywalt was born in Hudson, Ohio, on January 5, 1970, the youngest of six children, to Charlene (née Bable) and Charles Daywalt. "I grew up in a house in Hudson, Ohio, that was notoriously haunted. It looked like 'The Munsters.'" The house had a storied reputation in the local area, having supposedly been a stagecoach stop, a brothel, and a respite on the Underground Railroad at various times.

Daywalt's older brothers, however unintentionally, fostered his interest in scary stories. He relates, "My older brothers would always let me stay up way too late on Friday nights, drink Mountain Dew, watch horror movies. I was always getting into their comic books ... Heavy Metal and Creepy and Tales from the Crypt. Also, at the time – this is going back to the mid 70s, almost into the early 80s – they were reading Tolkien and lot of that, so I had that as one side of my experiences. Growing up in a haunted house, watching horror movies with my older brothers and getting into their stash of horror magazines and comic books."

Daywalt's family eventually moved to nearby Stow, Ohio, where he attended Highland Elementary School. After graduating from Stow-Munroe Falls High School in 1988, Daywalt pursued creative writing at Emerson College in Boston. Daywalt made numerous shorts with Fewdio, and his 2009 horror short "Bedfellows" won the Chiller-Eyegore Award for Best Short Film. Drew Grant of Salon described Daywalt's work with the group as "the first really great horror films for the Internet era." The film was met with mixed to negative reviews.

Writing children's books

The Day the Crayons Quit Drew Daywalt's first children's picture book, The Day the Crayons Quit, with illustrations by Oliver Jeffers, was published by Philomel Books on June 27, 2013. The book was a critical and commercial success, earning positive responses from critics and selling over one-and-a-half million copies worldwide. The idea for the book originated with a simple box of crayons on Daywalt's desk, and his affinity for writing dialogue.

"I thought, 'Here I am, a grown-up — it was before I had kids — and I have a box of crayons on my desk.' It was still important enough for me in my life to have a box of crayons around. I didn't exactly know what to write about crayons, but I knew that it was something I wanted to approach.

"In Hollywood I had been a script doctor for years, fixing dialogue on movies. As a writer, one of my strengths is voice, so I thought, 'I'm going to give these crayons voices ...' I decided I'd write them as monologues in the form of letters, in an epistolary style — basically all these crayons would chew this kid out because they didn't like the way they were being used. They were like letters of resignation."

Since the book's original publication in 2013, The Day the Crayons Quit has been almost unrivaled in sales within its genre. In 2015, Entertainment Weekly referred to it as the longest running title to ever appear on The New York Times Best Seller list for children's picture books, the book having held the weekly number-one spot on the list for over a year, and a total of 258 weeks on the list as of January 2019.

Critical response to the book has been largely positive. For instance, the starred review in Publishers Weekly stated, "Making a noteworthy debut, Daywalt composes droll missives that express aggravation and aim to persuade", while referring to the crayon characters as "memorable personalities [that] will leave readers glancing apprehensively at their own crayon boxes."

In 2014, Danielle Herzog of The Washington Post joyfully related the experience of reading the book to her own children. "As I read each letter to my 6 and 3-year-old children", she wrote, "they howled with laughter. They loved the argument between the orange and yellow crayon over who gets to be the color of the sun, and they cracked up when the poor white crayon is only used to make pictures of cats and snow ... But the best part came after the book was closed and put away. They rushed to their own crayon boxes, pulled out the same colors we read about, and started to color an array of pictures now gracing our refrigerator door." Later, the book won the Texas Bluebonnet Award in 2015, having received 29,931 votes from Texas children. Daywalt and Jeffers received the award in person, on April 16, 2015, at the Texas Bluebonnet Award Luncheon. The book also won the 2015 Nevada Young Readers Award, the 2016 California Young Reader Medal, and the 2016 Young Hoosier Book Award (Picture Book).

In late July 2014, the film rights for The Day the Crayons Quit were purchased by Universal Studios, with Matt Lopez set to script and Madhouse Entertainment set to produce.

Other children's books In October 2014, Daywalt announced a sequel to the book titled The Day the Crayons Came Home. The book garnered critical acclaim and similarly enthusiastic sales, remaining on The New York Times Best Seller list for children's picture books for over 40 weeks.

In 2017, Daywalt wrote another picture book The Legend of Rock Paper Scissors, illustrated by Adam Rex, which won the 2019–2020 Young Hoosier Book Award.

Awards + Book Title Award Year(s)

The New York Times Best Sellers List - Children's Picture Books 2013 - 2025 Barnes & Noble's Best New Kids' Books of 2013 2013 Amazon's Top 20 Editors' Picks: Children's Books - Best Books of 2013 2013 Goodreads.com Choice Awards Best Picture Book of 2013 2013 Newsday New Picture Book for Kids' Summer Reading 2013 School Library Journal Best Books 2013 Picture Books Top 10 2013 Hudson Booksellers 2013 Book of the Year Best Young Readers 2013 The Children's Book Council Children's Choice Book Awards (Kindergarten to Second Grade Book of the Year Finalist) 2014 E. B. White Read Aloud Award Winners - Picture Book 2014 Minnesota State Moorhead Comstock-Gág Read Aloud Book Award 2014 Children's Book Ireland Book of the Year Awards - Children's Choice Award 2014 Maryland Association of School Librarians Black-Eyed Susan Book Award 2014-2015 Time Magazine LIST: The 100 Best Children's Books of All Time 2015 Texas Bluebonnet Award 2015 Grand Canyon Reader Award - Picture Book 2015 Illinois Monarch Award 2015 2015 Mississippi Children's Museum Magnolia Book Award (Grades Pre-K-2) 2015 Kansas Bill Martin Jr. Picture Book Award 2015 Golden Archer Award in the Primary Category (Grades K-2) - Wisconsin Educational Media and Technology Association (WEMTA) 2015 North Carolina Children's Book Award - Picture Book 2015 Michigan Reading Association Great Lakes Great Books Award (Kindergarten & 1st Grade) 2015 Vermont's K-4 Children's-Choice Picture Book Red Clover Book Award 2015 Connecticut 2015 Nutmeg Book Award - Elementary 2015 Minnesota Youth Reading Awards Star of the North Award 2015 Colorado Children's Book Award Winners - Picture Book Winner 2015 Washington Children's Choice Picture Book Award 2015 New Hampshire State Library 2015 Ladybug Picture Book Award 2015 Red House Children's Book Award 2015 - Best Book Overall (England) 2015 Red House Children's Book Award 2015 - Young Readers (England) 2015 2015 West Australian Young Readers’ Book Awards (WAYRBA) - Picture Book 2015 South Carolina Association of School Libraries Picture Book Award 2015-2016 California Young Reader Medal Winner - Primary 2015-2016 Arkansas Diamond Primary Book Award, 2015–2016, Grades K-3 2015-2016 Nebraska Golden Sower Award, 2015-2016 - Primary, Grades K-3 2015-2016 Tennessee Volunteer State Book Awards, 2015-2016 - Primary Division, Grades PreK-2 2015-2016 Indiana Young Hoosier Book Award, 2015–2016, Grades K-3