When a little girl named Allie breaks her blue crayon, she is "furious, fuming, frustrated, and so, SO, SOOO ANGRY!" So angry, in fact, that she turns into a stomping, smashing furry red monster. Her big brother works to help her calm down, giving her a pillow to punch, a toy to squeeze and suggestions to take deep breaths and count backward. As she successfully applies each tactic, gradually reducing her rage, she sheds the brightly colored fur skins that represent her feelings. By the time "the rest of the angry [falls] away," there's just one slightly forlorn little girl in pigtails standing in the room, asking her brother for a hug. "I knew she was in there all along," he says.
Sarah Lynne Reul's (The Breaking News) illustrations are brilliantly evocative of each mood as Allie cools down, and the language she uses provides readers with a veritable thesaurus of vocabulary words for angry feelings: "ferocious," "fierce," irritable." And the labels on the crayons in the inside front cover give a poetic flavor to emotions: "fire fury explosion red," "raging flame orange," "simmering green storm" and the infamous broken "deep down blue." Children who are still trying to find words for their own powerful feelings will love seeing Allie's moods reflected in colors and should even pick up a few anger management tips from her wise, loving older brother.
Inside the back cover the venomous crayon color labels are no longer visible, and the previously broken blue crayon is now taped together. Almost as good as new, just like Allie! Allie All Along deserves a spot on the shelf with Where the Wild Things Are, When Sophie Gets Angry--Really, Really Angry... and My Mouth Is a Volcano. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor