Take a break from calling your reps. For just a few minutes, stop doomscrolling and gloomposting. As you watch me open a box of books, you are also witnessing the successful completion of a 15-year-project… the publication in full and for the first time of Crockett Johnson’s classic comic strip Barnaby! That’s right, Barnaby Volume
Have you been wondering whether to see the new Harold and the Purple Crayon movie? Or perhaps you have been wondering what Crockett Johnson’s biographer thinks about it? As that very person, I am glad to answer both of your questions. And I do, in “The Purple Crayon on the Big Screen,” published in School
Happy Crockett Johnson’s Birthday! Were he among the living, he would turn 117 today. (Spoiler alert: he died 48 years ago.) I had hoped to be able to offer an Official Announcement of some forthcoming Crockett Johnson projects. Instead, I can offer one unofficial announcement, one teaser, and one expectation. Unofficial, but hopeful: Barnaby Vol.
I recently finished writing my notes and afterword for Crockett Johnson’s Barnaby, Volume Five: 1950-1952 (Fantagraphics, forthcoming 2023). When I opened up the “Afterword” document, I found a two-paragraph fragment chronicling a holiday that Crockett Johnson (whose friends called him by his given name, Dave) and Ruth Krauss took in 1950 or 1951. A decade
In which you get all the excitement of receiving a package… without the package itself! Yes, I have made an unboxing video. It’s my first. See what you think! I can tell you what I think: I should have shown more of the interior of the book! Crockett Johnson’s cartoons! If I were more energetic,
Well, it is almost here. Barnaby Volume Four is in press. The book will officially be released on December 1st. I hoped to have an advance copy to show you by today — Crockett Johnson’s 114th birthday. But I don’t. I do, however, have a pdf from the page-proofs stage. One of the classic comic strips,
Where is the fourth volume of Crockett Johnson’s Barnaby (co-edited by yours truly and Eric Reynolds)? Wasn’t it supposed to be out a year or two ago? What happened? In 2017, I submitted my Afterword and notes, Trina Robbins gave us her Foreword, and Jared Gardner contributed his Introduction. We hoped the book would be
Good news: I’ve finished the Afterword and Notes for Crockett Johnson‘s Barnaby Volume Four: 1948-1949 (co-edited with Eric Reynolds, and coming next year from Fantagraphics)! Revision to first sentence: we might put “finished” in quotation marks because there are a few references that stump me. Perhaps you can help? At the back of each book,
74 years ago this month, five-year-old Barnaby Baxter wished for a fairy godmother. Instead, Mr. O’Malley – a loquacious, endearing, pink-winged con-artist – flew through Barnaby’s (open) bedroom window, and announced himself as the lad’s fairy godfather. For the next ten years, devoted readers of Crockett Johnson‘s Barnaby saw O’Malley elected to congress, running a
You don’t need to get all of Crockett Johnson’s allusions to enjoy his classic strip, Barnaby. But I’m the sort of person who wants to know these things. So, at the back of each Barnaby book (5 volumes, Fantagraphics, 2013-2017), I’m providing notes for other readers like me. You know who you are. But Crockett
