If the Drying-Paint Watchers’ Association has a website, they’re about to face some competition! I’m publishing more cuts from the biography of Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss (due out from UP Mississippi next year). Â Today, we’ll look at some of the notes I’ve omitted. Â I’ve also been making cuts to the body of the manuscript,
A Crockett Johnson–Ruth Krauss biography update with good news, thanks, and apologies. Â Let’s do the apologies first. Apologies. Â It was unprofessional of me to air this disagreement publicly. Â It’s one thing to blog about the editing process, and another to air one’s editorial differences in a public forum. Â I’ve already apologized to my editor (who
I haven’t blogged about the biography of Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss for a while because I’ve been waiting. Â I sent in the latest version of the manuscript back on the first of the year; my editor finally read it in late March, and sent it out to a reader. Â I received the reader’s report
69 years ago today, the first daily strip of Crockett Johnson‘s Barnaby ran in the newspaper PM. Â One year from today, Fantagraphics will begin reprinting Barnaby in full (co-edited by me and Eric Reynolds) – and the University Press of Mississippi will publish my biography of Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss. Â In anticipation of both
As a follow-up to Saturday’s post (featuring Crockett Johnson’s Little Man with the Eyes strip), here are a few more of Johnson‘s Little Man comics, starting with one for April Fools Day, 1941. I was pleased to see Mark Newgarden share the original post on Facebook because — as I was writing the original post —
He’s famous for Harold and the Purple Crayon (1955) and the comic strip Barnaby (1942-1952), but Crockett Johnson wrote an earlier strip – one that was popular enough to feature in a series of Ford advertisements in the late 1940s.  Popularly known as The Little Man with the Eyes, Johnson’s strip ran in Collier’s from March
This isn’t the only kind of “pie” that Crockett Johnson was interested in. In addition to “all nine kinds of pie that Harold likes best,” Johnson also drew inspiration from π (3.14159265…) – the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. In early 1968, he began the project of “squaring the circle,” constructing a
As has been noted previously on this blog, a color Sunday Barnaby ran from 1946 to 1948 – apt, because when in 1942 Crockett Johnson showed cartoonist (and PM Art Editor) Charles Martin a Sunday strip, Martin then shared the strip with PM Comics Editor Hannah Baker.  She decided to run it, beginning Barnaby‘s ten-year run.  Apart from these
As I wait to hear back from my editor (latest revision submitted January 1st), I continue to tinker with the biography of Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss. Does my manuscript’s silence on the homosexuality of two important figures – Maurice Sendak (who illustrated nine of Ruth’s books) and Ursula Nordstrom (editor of Ruth, Dave, Maurice) –
Following the deaths this month of Brian Jacques, Janet Schulman, and Margaret K. McElderry, we turn to the last words of those who wrote for the young – Seuss, Dahl, Thurber, Montgomery, Nesbit, Charles M. Schulz, Crockett Johnson, and others. “Yes. I’m not going to die tomorrow.” – Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel, 1904-1991) “Ow,