Harold and the Purple Crayon

Crockett Johnson or originally known as David Johnson Leisk was born in New York City in 1906. From an early age Johnson was relentlessly creative. Johnson was known for his first comic strip Barnaby in 1942 which showed his knack for simplistic art and later defined his work.^[2] He continued to practice cartooning children’s books, while collaborating with his wife Ruth Krauss.^[2] Together the two produced their next book The Carrot Seed.^[2] Later, Johnson created Harold and the Purple Crayon. According to Nel, Johnson designed the book to be around six inches tall and five inches wide, made to be fit for a young child’s hand.^[3] The name Harold is thought to be in honor of his nephew.^[2] 10,000 copies were sold in the first printing.^[2] This later pushed Johnson to continue the series to write Harold’s Fairytale.^[2]

The protagonist, Harold, is a curious four-year-old^[4] boy who, with his magic purple crayon, has the power to create a world of his own simply by drawing it.

Harold wants to go for a walk in the moonlight, but there is no moon, so he draws one. He has nowhere to walk, so he draws a path. Using his purple crayon, he goes on many adventures including encountering a dragon guarding an apple tree, boating through deep waters, eating a picnic consisting only of nine flavors of pies, and flying in a hot-air balloon that saves him from a fall. Eventually Harold grows tired, and searches for his bedroom window in order to go to bed. He draws many windows, drawing an entire city, yet none are his. Finally, Harold remembers where his window is situated and constructs his own room and bed, and nods off to sleep.^[1]

• Harold and the Purple Crayon (1955)
• Harold's Fairy Tale (1956)
• Harold's Trip to the Sky (1957)
• Harold at the North Pole (1958)
• Harold's Circus (1959)
• A Picture for Harold's Room (easy reader, 1960)
• Harold's ABC (1963)
• Harold and His Friends: A Harold and the Purple Crayon Treasury (2003)
• Adventures of Harold and His Friends (2005)
• Harold's Treasure Hunt (posthumous, 2020)

Harold and the Purple Crayon has consistently been well regarded as a children's literature favorite and has been praised for its combination of themes of childhood imagination and reality. There have been nine sequels. Remaining popular amongst children's teachers, it ranked in the National Education Association's "Teachers' Top 100 Books for Children," and ranked 16th among School Library Journal's "Top 100 Picture Books" in its 2012 survey.^[5]

In 2010, feminist scholar Louise Collins offered a critique of the book, arguing that its depiction of childhood creativity relies on masculinist ideals.^[6] She pointed out that Harold is shown drawing, but never speaking for himself, and that an adult narrator stays in control of the story the entire time.^[6] In contrast, Philip Nel argues that Harold and the Purple Crayon carries political meaning, suggesting that Harold's ability to adapt and use his imagination shows younger children that they can push back against a world they don't have full control over.^[7]

Harold and the Purple Crayon has been credied with shaping a whole genre of picture books about young artists who "sometimes struggle with but ultimately take delight in the artistic process like Harold."^[8]Book Links celebrated the book's 60th anniversary with a dedicated feature that shows how central Harold has become to children's literature about creativity.^[8] Scholar of early childhood education Burhanettin Keskin has emphasized that the book has real value in the classroom, in that it provides a path through difficult topics like feeling lost and separated from home, and teaches young children to be brave and curious.^[9]

The book has been used frequently in children's and art education lesson plans, as well as referenced in other children's literature.^[10]

In 2024, scholar of children's literature and Johnson biographer Philip Nel wrote that Johnson may have originally intended Harold to be a Black child. He based this on an analysis of the original art with Johnson's notes to the printer as to what percentage of what color inks should be used to represent Harold's skin, and compared this to how Caucasian skin tone was typically represented by the printing technology of that era, concluding that Harold was deliberately portrayed as brown. Nel placed this in the context of Johnson's history of anti-racism, noting that this had brought him to the attention of the FBI, which perceived advocacy for racial equality as communist; he further observed that Johnson's wife Ruth Krauss had written an explicitly anti-racist children's book some years earlier which had been rejected by publishers. As such, Nel posited that Harold's skin tone may have been a "subtle political statement" intended to provide "cover" to Johnson and his publisher. Ultimately, Nel concluded that — prior to the 1998 reprint, where the publishers modified the cover art, changing Harold's skin tone from "original tan to light peach" — Harold was "racially ambiguous", and emphasized that although he himself had (as a child) perceived Harold as white, others (including Chris Ware and Bryan Collier) had not.^[11]

One of the protagonists in Captain Underpants, Harold Hutchins, is named after the protagonist in the book, with its author, Dav Pilkey, insisting on naming his main characters after his "childhood literary loves."^[14] In the book This Thing Called Life: Prince's Odyssey, On and Off the Record by the author Neal Karlen, Prince's mother, Mattie Shaw, confirmed that his favorite book as a child was Harold and the Purple Crayon and was the reason for Prince's love of the color purple.^[15]

The book inspired programmer Petri Purho to create the computer game Crayon Physics Deluxe.^[16][17]