​​THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
The clever A Day With No Crayons Rising Moon; 28 pages; $15.95 by Elizabeth Rusch and illustrated by Chad Cameron follows a little girl named Liza who, after drawing on the wall with her crayons, gets them taken away for the day. Let the punishment fit the crime, her mother must have thought.

From that point on, Liza's world is rendered in shades of gray, except for the color she discovers in everyday objects: her blue-green toothpaste, brown mud on the basketball court, green on the knees of her grass-stained pants, which become rainbow pants when she crushes dandelions, blackberries and tiger lilies on them. "Liza suddenly saw color everywhere!" And the reader does, too, as the pages transform from black and white to full color. Liza even uses organic and man-made materials as her paints, dragging a muddy stick across the park to make a brown line drawing and scraping a red brick on the sidewalk to draw the outline of a camel caravan. She not only learns her lesson about drawing on the walls, but she also learns she doesn't need to use crayons to create with color.

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DETROIT FREE PRESS
In A Day With No Crayons by Elizabeth Rusch with illustrations by Chad Cameron (Rising Moon/Cooper Square Press, $15.95), Liza runs out of paper and unwisely uses a blank wall as her canvas. Mom confiscates her crayons, leaving the girl in a colorless world.
Or so she thinks, until Liza begins to see the possibilities around her. Blue toothpaste is swirled into a Van Gogh-inspired work in the sink, flowers and berries make her pants come alive with brilliant color and more.
When she gets her crayons back, she decides instead to make art out of what's around her: a self-portrait using clothes, toys and her dog. This is a great story of imagination and inspiration.

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FLINT JOURNAL REVIEW
A little girl's world turns colorless when her mother punishes for writing on the wall by taking away her crayons in Elizabeth Rusch's A Day With No Crayons (Rising Moon, $15.95). But Liza discovers color is all around her in things as unlikely as toothpaste and mud. Illustrated by Chad Cameron, the book is a reminder that creativity is not limited to crayons.

KIDSBOOKSHELF
By Christina Lewis

Liza loves her crayons, and she loves to draw with all of the amazing colors she finds. But one day she runs out of paper and coloring books, so she decides to create a masterpiece on her nice, white bedroom wall. Her mother, not happy about crayon on the wall, takes Liza's crayons away. Liza's world suddenly goes gray. What will she do without her crayons? Upset, Liza goes outside, but she soon discovers a whole world of amazing colors just waiting for her. A fun book about creativity and seeing the colors in the world around us. (Ages 4-8)

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LOOKING GLASS REVIEW
Liza was crayon mad. She loved to create pictures bright with color and her artwork filled her coloring books and covered her walls. Then one day she ran out paper and she had nothing, absolutely nothing, to color on. So Liza decided to color on a blank wall. When Liza’s mother saw what she was doing she was furious. In fact she was so angry that she took away Liza’s crayons for a whole day.

Liza was devastated. How could she survive for a whole day without her crayons? Then, when she was outside, she discovered that there are other ways to create art. She found that squashed flowers and other plants could produce vibrant colors. She realized that there was “color everywhere” she looked. All she had to do was tap into it.

So using a stick as her pen, and mud and leaves as her colors, she drew a tree. Using an old red brick she drew camels on a sidewalk. Using petals and pebbles, leaves and dandelions, she created an ocean scene. Liza was learning that she could ‘draw’ with practically anything so long as she used her imagination.

In this magical picture book children will get to meet a young artist who discovers that the world of art is a lot bigger than she ever dreamed it was. With clever pictorial artistic references to famous artists and their works, and an imaginative use of color, the illustrator does a masterful job showing the reader how Liza’s eyes are opened to new possibilities. Chad Cameron’s creative multimedia illustrations are a joy to look at and they capture the lively emotions that Liza experiences as the story unfolds.

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