By Michael Hall
A crayon labeled red can only draw blue, no matter how hard everyone pushes him to be red, until a new friend is the first to see him for what he is.
Red has a bright red label, so everyone treats him like a red crayon. The only trouble is that everything he draws comes out blue. His teacher hands him strawberries to color. His mother sets up a playdate with a yellow crayon so the two of them can make an orange together. The scissors even trim his label back to give him room. Nothing works, and Red just feels wrong without knowing why. Then a new friend named Berry asks him to draw a blue ocean for her boat, and it pours right out of him. He was blue the whole time.
You'll see it long before Red does. Every grown-up reading this watches him try to be red and fail, and wants to reach into the book and tell him he's fine exactly as he is. Michael Hall never spells the idea out, which is why it works at more than one age: a four-year-old can hear a funny story about a crayon who colors everything wrong, and an older child can hear something about being told who you are when you already know better. The label and the color do all the explaining, so a young child follows the whole thing without needing a single word of help.