Harold and the Purple Crayon

Harold and the Purple Crayon is a 1955 children's picture book written and illustrated by Crockett Johnson. Published by HarperCollins Publishers, it is Johnson's most popular book, and has led to a series of other related books, as well as many adaptations. The story is written in third-person point-of-view, and follows a toddler boy on an imaginative adventure through the night.
The protagonist, Harold, is a curious four-year-old boy who, with his magic purple crayon, has the power to create a world of his own simply by drawing it.
Harold wants to go for a walk in the moonlight, but there is no moon, so he draws one. He has nowhere to walk, so he draws a path. Using his purple crayon, he goes on many adventures including encountering a dragon guarding an apple tree, boating through deep waters, eating a picnic consisting only of nine flavors of pies, and flying in a hot-air balloon that saves him from a fall. Eventually Harold grows tired, and searches for his bedroom window in order to go to bed. He draws many windows, drawing an entire city, yet none are his. Finally, Harold remembers where his window is situated and constructs his own room and bed, and nods off to sleep.
The original story was adapted by Weston Woods Studios and Brandon Films into a seven-minute short film in 1959, directed by David Piel and narrated by Norman Rose. In 1971, Gene Deitch directed an animation of A Picture for Harold's Room, and in 1974 an animation of Harold's Fairy Tale. In 1993, these three animations were packaged with a documentary, and sold as the Harold and the Purple Crayon and Other Harold Stories set. These stories were also featured on the popular CBS children's television show Captain Kangaroo, which ran for 29 years on the network. There have also been theater adaptations.
In 2011, the story was adapted as an interactive book for the iPad by Trilogy Studios.
In 2001, the stories were adapted by Adelaide Productions into a 13-episode animated television series for HBO narrated by Sharon Stone and featuring Connor Matheus as the voice of Harold. The series won a Daytime Emmy Award for "Main Title Design", and was nominated for an Annie Award and Humanitas Prize. The show was also released on VHS and DVD.
The series focuses on Harold using his purple crayon to explore a new world. Each episode has Harold focusing on life lessons throughout his journeys.
In February 2010, it was reported that Columbia Pictures was developing a live-action film adaptation of Harold and the Purple Crayon, to be produced by Will Smith and James Lassiter, and written by Josh Klausner, but it never came in the fruition. In December 2016, it was reported that the film would also be written by Dallas Clayton.
On February 1, 2021, it was reported that Zachary Levi would star in the film, later revealed to be portraying Harold as a grown man. It was also announced that David Guion and Michael Handelman replaced Klausner and Clayton as screenwriters, with John Davis producing. While Zooey Deschanel was added in the cast, it was announced that Carlos Saldanha was attached to direct the film. The film was originally scheduled to be released on January 27, 2023, but was pushed back to June 30, 2023, and later August 2, 2024.
On March 11, 2022, a Broadway musical adaptation was announced. It will feature an original score by Jack and Ryan Met from the band AJR and will focus on an adult version of Harold facing challenges in everyday life without his magical purple crayon. As of 2024, there have been no updates on the musical.
Harold and the Purple Crayon has consistently been well regarded as a children's literature favorite and has been praised for its combination of themes of childhood imagination and reality. A series of nine titles followed. Remaining popular amongst children's teachers, it ranked in the National Education Association's "Teachers' Top 100 Books for Children," and ranked 16th among School Library Journal's "Top 100 Picture Books" in its 2012 survey.
The book has been used frequently in children's and art education lesson plans, as well as referenced in other children's literature. One of the protagonists in Captain Underpants, Harold Hutchins, is named after the protagonist in the book, with its author, Dav Pilkey, insisting on naming his main characters after his "childhood literary loves." In the book This Thing Called Life: Prince's Odyssey, On and Off the Record by the author Neal Karlen, Prince's mother, Mattie Shaw, confirmed that his favorite book as a child was Harold and the Purple Crayon and was the reason for Prince's love of the color purple.
The book inspired programmer Petri Purho to create the computer game Crayon Physics Deluxe.
In 2024, scholar of children's literature and Johnson biographer Philip Nel wrote that Johnson may have originally intended Harold to be a Black child. He based this on an analysis of the original art with Johnson's notes to the printer as to what percentage of what color inks should be used to represent Harold's skin, and compared this to how Caucasian skin tone was typically represented by the printing technology of that era, concluding that Harold was deliberately portrayed as brown. Nel placed this in the context of Johnson's history of anti-racism, noting that this had brought him to the attention of the FBI, which perceived advocacy for racial equality as communist; he further observed that Johnson's wife Ruth Krauss had written an explicitly anti-racist children's book some years earlier which had been rejected by publishers. As such, Nel posited that Harold's skin tone may have been a "subtle political statement" intended to provide "cover" to Johnson and his publisher. Ultimately, Nel concluded that — prior to the 1998 reprint, where the publishers modified the cover art, changing Harold's skin tone from "original tan to light peach" — Harold was "racially ambiguous", and emphasized that although he himself had (as a child) perceived Harold as white, others (including Chris Ware and Bryan Collier) had not.