This Book Is Gray

Cute and Enjoyable But Massively Misses Target Demographic

I am so confused and conflicted because I both enjoyed parts of this book and felt like it completely failed in its mission. As an adult, I appreciated the sarcastic humour and liked the art for being cute. However, I don't believe children will understand this type of story or even be able to grasp the underlying message. I'm not even sure I can grasp the message myself, seeing how far it deviates from what's promised.

This isn't actually a book within a book; it's a book about anthropomorphized colours gathering around while one of their peers attempts to illustrate a story. By the end, the creating character doesn't even properly end his tale - which is more of a madlib filled in while arguing over artistic direction than a real story. And while this appears at first to be a cute story about how Gray is unappreciated and lonely and wants to show the value of his own talents, it quickly devolves into him being bullied by the other colours. Ultimately, one ruins the story he's trying to tell by vandalizing it with their own colour and the others decide that the only way to fix the ruins of Gray's project is to colour it. Yep, his personal project meant to be about him gets vandalized and then the people who were bullying him insert their own personal tastes while claiming to help him fix the damage.??

The message is confusing and vague. Is it about self worth? If so, it fails. Is it about acceptance? If so, it handles the matter entirely wrong. Acceptance isn't forcing others to assimilate to your own preferences. I just don't get it. Worse, most of the language used feels more suitable for middle grade readers despite being a picture book. I can't see a child understanding or enjoying this and I can't see a preteen wanting to read it.

Overall, I do think it's cute and I did like it but I wouldn't recommend this book for children. Maybe if the moral didn't get warped into how you can??be??happier from acceptance into a group which has been mistreating you, I'd say it's worth trying. But as is, I just can't say it's good for kids.

Note:??I had trouble reading the Kindle edition of this book. Though you can double-tap text to get a larger version, it's imperfect. For example, once enabled, it continually zooms the text - including one instance where it zoomed one bubble on top of another and hid the text from the bottom one. There's also no pinch-zoom option, which meant I basicslly had to stick my nose to my phone to read this book. Not exactly a pleasant experience, and I'm even using a large phone! I dread to imagine how uncomfortable it is for people with smaller devices.