Review - Gurple and Preen: A Broken Crayon Cosmic Adventure

Gurple and Preen: A Broken Crayon Cosmic Adventure
by Linda Sue Park
illustrated by Debbie Ridpath Ohi
Date: 2020
Publisher: Simon Schuster Books for Young Readers
Reading level: C
Book type: picture book
Pages: 48
Format: e-book
Source: library

This wildly imaginative, crayon-inspired picture book shows that with a bit of teamwork and a universe of creativity, anything is possible!

Buzz!
Zap!
CRASH!

Gurple and Preen are in a big mess!

When they crash-land onto an unfamiliar planet with nothing but boxes of crayons, they must work together to get the mission back on course.

From Newbery Award–winning author Linda Sue Park and illustrator Debbie Ridpath Ohi comes a story about all the best things that can come out of a box of crayons.

(synopsis from Goodreads)

I'm afraid this one has me a bit confused. It's like we're supposed to be in the author's head. I get that these robots snap apart crayons to release objects (weird, but... okay). The confusing part is when Gurple keeps fretting about "the pods", like we're supposed to know the significance of them. (They look like a box of crayons, so I wasn't sure why they were so special.) It's almost as if this is a sequel to another book where all of the weirdness was explained. As far as I can tell, though, it isn't.

The premise is creative and the overall message is good, but since I spent so much time mentally saying "WTF?!" I had a hard time enjoying the story. Maybe this one grows on you when you read it a few times. I'm not interested enough to find out.

Premise: 2/5
Meter: n/a
Writing: 2/5
Illustrations: 3/5
Originality: 3/5

Enjoyment: 2/5

Overall: 2.33 out of 5