An unboxing video that answers two questions: A dozen years ago, I began dreaming up a small book about Crockett Johnson’s Harold and the Purple Crayon. It would be a biography of a book, a succinct introduction to how picture books work, and show people what we gain when we look closely — especially at something
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
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
Supporters of felonious Trump are lying about Tim Walz’s dog, Scout. Which is ridiculous. During the 1944 election, Republicans attacked FDR’s dog, Fala. People thought this ridiculous, too. FDR mocked these attacks in what became known as “the Fala Speech.” To support FDR’s 1944 re-election campaign, the Independent Voters Committee of the Arts and Sciences
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
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.
For Crockett Johnson’s 116th Birthday, here is the signed first edition of Harold and the Purple Crayon that he gave to Maurice Sendak. During this period, he was spending many a weekend at the Rowayton home of Johnson and Ruth Krauss, working on her children’s books. Between 1951 and 1960, Sendak illustrated 8 of Krauss’s books.
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
