Harold draws himself into quite an adventure with his purple crayon

- Fantasy.
- Fantasy.

Harold goes for a walk in the moonlight, taking his purple crayon with him. On his walk he encounters various predicaments and adventures. In each case he is able to draw his way out of the problem with his purple crayon until finally he is able to return to his own home, bed and sleep.

First published in 1955, Harold and his Purple Crayon is a wonderful story emphasizing imagination, gentleness, consideration and prudent courage. There is enough adventure, tinged with concern, to grip a child's imagination but Harold imaginatively uses his crayon to draw whatever it is that he needs to extract himself from each of his predicaments. While simple, the drawings have held the attention of three generations of children and are supplemented by clever language. This can be read at any time but is a good bed-time story because, though gripping, Harold, with his purple crayon, is always in control.

Johnson's style is simple and uncluttered without being austere. There are only three colors, black lines, the purple of the crayon and a gray shading. It might be worth pointing out to the children that there are in fact two styles of drawing in the book, that of Crockett Johnson drawing Harold and that of Harold drawing his pictures. What are the differences? How can one artist draw in two styles? The way the language of the story intersects with the illustrations is probably also worth pointing out as when Harold "drew up the covers"

Yes it is an adventure, a young child heading out for a walk in the moonlight by himself, but it is a very mild adventure where about the worst threat comes from the frightening dragon that Harold draws to guard his apple tree, so frightening that it" even frightened Harold".

Like the drawings, the language is relatively spare without much clutter. There are clever set-ups that challenge a child to think about the meaning of words as when Harold draws "a very small forest, with just one tree in it."

The text makes very explicit the free-form connection of ideas "The sandy beach reminded Harold of picnics. And the thought of picnics made him hungry."

The setting is without feature other than that which Harold creates through his drawings. These include a path, and forest (of one tree) an ocean, a mountain, a city and ultimately his bedroom.

For such a short and simple story there are many notable character attributes to draw attention to. Though Harold encounters many predicaments he is a model of calm self-reliance as well as consideration. At one point Harold's hunger causes him to draw too many pies ("But there were all nine kinds of pie that Harold liked best"). Instead of wasting the pie, Harold considerately "left a very hungry moose and a deserving porcupine to finish it up." Even when falling through the air from the side of the mountain, Harold remains alert and calm and "kept his wits and his purple crayon."

An excellent story for a dialogue with children. What would they have done in Harold's position? Were there other ways for him to draw his way out of trouble? Do you think you would enjoy walking with Harold? Is he a nice guy?

Have your child draw their own adventure. Have them experiment drawing in more than one style.

Crockett Johnson was married to children's book writer Ruth Krauss ("A Hole is to Dig", "The Carrot Seed", etc.). The following site has a nice biographical summary of Crockett Johnson. http://www.k-state.edu/english/nelp/purple/index.html It is interesting to note that Maurice Sendak spent a lot of time with Ruth Krauss and Crockett Johnson and regards Johnson as a significant influence on his own work.