How is a Crayon Made?

by Oz Charles

Read about how crayons are made

Genres: Nonfiction, Picture Books, Science, Childrens, Art

32 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

Reviews

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great non-fiction book, often used in my second grade classroom, prior to our field trip to The Crayola Crayon Factory in Pennsylvania. Interesting, useful for teaching social studies lessons about goods & services, as well as teaching about putting things into steps (both to understand the steps, and to write steps in order).

Colorful photographs, but the text is a little "dry," so teachers will want to supplement with commentary. I also liked to show my students my "collector's edition" box of Crayola "state colors," with a cool color & color-name for each of the fifty United States.

[Jenna]

This is a very cool book, it's all about how crayons are used and made. Kids will be intreasted in this book because they use crayons in class and out all the time. The pictures in the story help to vividly explain the making process so it's a fun read. It's a fiarly long books so you might want to span this read over two days and perhaps do a how to writing assignment to make it more memorable for the kids.

[Luisa Knight · Rating 4 out of 5]

This reminds me of Reading Rainbow! I loved how the show would take you on a virtual field trip so you could see how things were made or how they worked.

This book does the same, only with photos taken of the various processes and equipment used.

Now I’m curious whether there’s a crayon factory next to me and if they do tours.

Ages: 4 - 10

Content Considerations: nothing to note.

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[Maria · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is good informational book to read! It's hard to image life without colors. Crayons are made in very interesting way. Nice book!

[Ari]

This nonfiction book is about how crayons are made. The first step in making crayons is creating the color. Water and various chemicals are mixed in big wooden tanks and make pigments. Each pigment is made in a separate tank. Metal is not used because it can mess up the chemical reaction of the pigment. The pigment solution gets water taken out of it so it is just a paste. Once they are processed the color plates are put into a kiln. Once that is done they take primary color pigments and send them off to keep making other shades of crayons. A pulverizer is used next to make a fine powder then is sent off to make crayons. Outside the manufacturing building, there are many tanks that hold melted wax, 17,000 gallons of wax exactly. The was is pumped through pipes into mixing vats, then powder pigment is added and the combination is stirred. After everything is combined there are molds filled with the wax and cooled. The crayons will be inspected of any broken tips or any impurities. if there are any they will be taken back to be melted and made into new crayons. After this the good crayons go to a labeling machine. The labeled crayons are then checked again for broken tips manually. A small number of crayons get taken to be inspected for quality. What the books calls a "crayon eater" eats the crayons and checks the crayons for their strength. If the crayon breaks sooner than it is supposed to the whole batch of crayons is sent back to be melted and remade. The crayons are also tested for their color intensity. It can be too pale, too dark, and inconsistent. Whether the application is too thin, too chunky, or even if there are wax chinks when drawing. Once the crayons pass the quality test. The crayons are moved to the packing area where the packing machine will put together a crayon box.

[Madison Reynolds · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought that this book was very informational, but outdated. I could incorporate this book within my classroom towards the end of the year, or if I am teaching Pre-K or Kinder I could use to help introduce colors. The activity that I would do with this book is to allow the students to make their own crayons. We could melt all of our old crayons and then put the melted wax in different shape molds for them to continue using. This is a fun and engaging activity to where they can still understand how crayons are made. This will also help them see how much work is put into making something the students actually use everyday.

[Becca Peterson · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is exactly what it sounds like. It is about how a crayon is made. First they create the color with water and chemicals. Next it talks about the following steps. The extra water is squeezed out of the crayons and put in trays. The crayons bake for a few hours and then go to the blender. Huge tanks hold the wax crayons. The pack the crayons in boxes and ship them off. This is a very informational book.

[Ashlyn Ewert · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think that children will find this book very interesting. This is a book that talks about a material that they use almost everyday when they are younger. Children get to see the process of making a crayon all the way from the beginning to end with realistic pictures. I think that it would be fun if you lived near the Crayola experience to take children there and have them create their own crayons.

[Mellanie C · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting.

[Lillian · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was one of my favourite books growing up

[☆BooksofA☆]

I think we might still have this book

[Megan Nelson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book describes the process of how crayons are made. The first step in making a crayon is the creation of the color, which is done by combining water and various chemicals in a big wooden tank. Each color is combined with wax (which creates colored wax) and then heated, and as the wax cools, it hardens. The crayons are then put into a square metal frame with little holes, one for each crayon. The crayons are then fed by a conveyor belt into a labeling machine, and after the crayons are labeled, they are grouped together by color and packaged; then they are ready to be shipped to stores and bought.
I liked this book! It was very interesting to read about how crayons are made! The book contained pictures of the actual process, so it was really cool to see what that looked like.
I could use this book in the classroom to talk about the process of making crayons since children everywhere (especially in schools) use them! It's a good book to relate to real-life and let the students have a behind-the-scenes look at how crayons are created.

[MaryCatherine]

Summary: Oz Charles takes the reader through a crayon factor teaching the various steps that go into making crayons. Color pigments are added to tanks of steaming wax turn them into crayons. This short read takes the reader through the entire detailed process.
Review: This book is packed of information on how crayons are made. By reading this book, the students will learn the hard work that went into making the crayons. Learning on how the crayons are made, hopefully will teach the students to respect their materials and not waste them.
Books: Two other books that will teach them on how our school supplies are made are Trees to Paper by Inez Snyder and Transformed: How Everyday Things are Made by Bill Slavin.
Quote: “They are ready to be bought, taken home, and used – the rest is up to you.”

[Sharon · Rating 5 out of 5]

While I have seen television shows on how a crayon is made, this book provides children with an inside glimpse not seen on television. Intricate details are provided and procedures for how a crayon is made is provided in the book- things I never even knew! This book would be ideal to share with a class regarding how a crayon is made. I think students would be intrigued to learn about the process of crayon-making since they use crayons so frequently!

[Sandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is part of my books collection, this particular is in Spanish. It's a good source to use to incorporated a science lesson, explains every step to produce a different colors of the crayons, the process involved different types barrels in which different kind of chemicals were mixed with water to produce the pigments which produce the colors for the crayons. Kids will enjoyed this story and will learn to take care their crayons.

[Sung Baick · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book showing the process of how crayons are made from start to finish. It's actually really fascinating and might be fun to share with the class (especially since almost all of them use crayons anyway). A few pages are really lenghty, but once again, the teacher can pick and choose the main points to summarize. Books like these are great to introduce manufacturing, assembly lines, etc.

[jacky · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had seen how these are made on TV before and this book followed what I knew very closely and even had a few details I never knew. I thought it was a little hard to follow in a couple of places, but otherwise it was just as cool as the TV spot I'd seen.

[Jasmine · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a awesome book to share with students! This book is very creative and a great way to introduce the way crayons are made to students. This is a way to bring crayons that students use everyday in the class into literacy. This book can be incorpoated into a science lesson easily.

[Artlab]

shows how a crayon is made.

[현순 최 · Rating 4 out of 5]

We can learn how to make crayons from this book. It's very useful!

[Samra · Rating 5 out of 5]

amazing. going to sum it up for my K Prep kiddos

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I liked this book. It did a good job explaining how crayons are made, in a simple way. My classmates read this in an economics lesson.

[Jena · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wanted to know, so I read the book.
I didn't realize there were so many steps in the process of making Crayolas.
Informative easy read.