It is Crockett Johnson’s 118th birthday. It is also very nearly Harold’s 70th birthday. 70 years ago next month, Crockett Johnson sent a dummy of Harold and the Purple Crayon to Ursula Nordstrom, his editor at Harper & Brothers. 69 years ago, the book was published. Let’s celebrate! If you’re anywhere near Kansas City on
Chris Ware might be the first person I know to suggest that Harold (of Purple Crayon fame) is Black. In the Foreword to the first volume of Barnaby (Fantagraphics, 2013), Ware recalled his own childhood reading of Crockett Johnson’s book: “Harold was black. At least he looked like it to me. Not that this should
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
Coming this fall from Oxford University Press, it’s How to Draw the World: Harold and the Purple Crayon, and the Making of a Children’s Classic. That’s right! It’s my small book about Crockett Johnson’s even smaller one. I’ve made a book trailer for it. I’ll share more about the book in the coming months. But
Here are some resources for supporting public libraries and defending everyone’s right to read freely. I assembled them for the “Censoring Children’s Literature” class I taught last semester, and am sharing them now in connection with the Modern Language Association panel “Drag Queens, Stories about Black People, and Other Dangers,” held in the Liberty Room
Here are all of the 2024 MLA sessions devoted to Children’s Literature, Comics/Graphic Novels, or Childhood Studies. The conference will be held this year in person in Philadelphia — and on-line, as noted below. I’ll be there! I’m chairing one on-line session and one in-person session. If you’ll be there, too, stop by and say
Why are people afraid of multicultural children’s books? To answer that question, I look back to the roots of American censorship — which, as you doubtless know, has been enjoying a renaissance lately. My piece makes its debut today in Geschichte der Gegenwart, a Swiss publication the title of which means History of the Present. That’s
Call for Papers: Nostalgia in and for Children’s Literature CFP for a guaranteed session sponsored by the MLA Forum on Children’s and Young Adult Literature. To be held at the 2024 MLA in Philadelphia, January 4-7, 2024 Nostalgia is a transideological phenomenon. Its politics depend upon the direction of its longing. There’s the restorative variety that
Here are all of the Children’s Literature and Comics/Graphic Novels sessions at the 2023 MLA, held this year in person in San Francisco — and on-line, as noted below. I’ll actually be there this year. (I’d planned to attend last year’s, but Omicron pushed most of the conference on-line. Here’s hoping any new variants prove
I was asked to give the commencement speech at the College of Arts and Sciences ceremony this morning. Here is the video — my speech begins at 15:01. Below, the full text. Good morning, graduates, families, friends, fellow teachers and fellow learners — for we are all always learning and, I think, all always teaching.
