Hughes Elementary’s substitute principal is all about the word No—no fun. When budding illustrator Colin makes a poor choice of canvas for his new crayons, Mr. Greystone goes ballistic and outlaws all colors. While the students sit through an assembly by famed illustrator Maurice Coleur, the crayons in the trash work together to build a wheel to get out. In the meantime, chaos reigns as Coleur realizes that his colors are gone. He faints, setting in motion a chain reaction that ends with Mr. Greystone gaining a new appreciation for colors. Reed’s characteristic childlike illustrations combine acrylics with photographs and colored paper and some digital editing. Brilliant colors cleverly give way to shades of grey as the colors are banned. The light story’s transitions are rather abrupt and the characters thinly developed. Still, the concept is clever and the vocabulary (smuggled, confiscated, bickering) punchy, and art teachers may well want to add this to their palettes. Backmatter introduces readers to the color wheel and its vocabulary as well as hue, tint, shade, value and warm and cool colors. (Picture book. 4-8)
