Color My World - Purple! Harold and the Purple Crayon
Harold and the Purple Crayon by Ruth Krauss, 1955
Bringing the bigness of the outside world under a child’s control. At the outset, the simple white background, cartoon child and purple line make this book seem slight, simple. Cute and childlike. But it’s ultimately a story of empowerment – Harold walks in the moonlight: the big, dark world outside of his control. But, oh, good! He has to draw the moon; the world is now entirely of his own making. He faces his fears, but always safely, always with the tools in hand that he needs to conquer them. A couple items of note:
- Several concepts are introduced: animals, the number nine, though they seem rather artificial.
- There’s a cute play on words, “drew up the covers.”
An aside: I read this as a child (was read to me) and I remember finding the ending disconcerting. Harold never does find his actual real-world bed, only the bed of his own creation.
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That aside...
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Rebecca has been writing since childhood, her first book about a kitten published between homemade cardboard covers in second grade. Although she studied religion and philosophy in university, she continued writing, earning an MFA from Hamline University and publishing multiple picture books (no longer with homemade covers) and a collection of poetry with a variety of New York and independent publishers. She has also published a wide array of fiction, essays, and poetry in magazines and journals and photographs for Getty Images. She balances writing with homeschooling the younger of her six children, launching her young adults, church activities, and overseeing a small flock of chickens in rural West Michigan.
If a culturally rich adaptation of a classic tale is going to be on a required reading list for any MFAC program, I think it should be Yeh Shen.