Harold takes his purple crayon to the walls of the Ben Franklin School, on Flax Hill, in Norwalk, Connecticut. The school houses the Head Start program. I’m told that the mural was painted by employees of Pepperidge Farm. The photos are all courtesy of Jackie Curtis, a friend of Ruth and Dave – a.k.a. Ruth
On her blog today, Anita Silvey asks her “readers to weigh in with their list of five books that they can’t live without or the ones they read again and again.” So, first, let me encourage you to weigh in over on her blog. As soon as this post is up, I’ll do the same.
This piece appeared in Comic Art in 2004. As the magazine is now (sadly) defunct, I’m posting the article here. Until The Purple Crayon and a Hole to Dig: The Lives of Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss appears in 2012, this essay is the most thorough account of Johnson’s life available. Enjoy! Philip Nel, “Crockett
One side effect of writing The Purple Crayon and A Hole to Dig: Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss (forthcoming, 2012) is that I could write pages on how Johnson’s Harold and the Purple Crayon (1955) has influenced subsequent artists and writers – and, for that matter, on Harold’s antecedents. (The list of works discussed in