Harold and the Purple Crayon is an illustrated children’s book first published in 1955 by Crockett Johnsonnote . The story follows a little boy named Harold as he wanders around drawing his own reality with his purple crayon and trying to get home.
Harold is colored in with a blue jumpsuit and Caucasian skin on the book's covernote , and in black-and-white in the story itself. Everything else in the story is purple, since it was drawn with the crayon; this lets the reader see that Harold is somehow more real than everything else.
It has received several sequels, and also been adapted into a series of children's animated shorts, as well as an animated series on HBO (produced by Sony Pictures Television). The series is completely available on DVD, so no need to hunt hard for it.
A live-action film was released in 2024, starring Zachary Levi as a grown-up Harold.
The books are aimed at children ages 3 to 8, but each one is a charming quick read for adults.
Titles in the series:
- Harold and the Purple Crayon (1955)
- Harold's Fairy Tale (1956)
- Harold's Trip to the Sky (1957)
- Harold at the North Pole (1958)
- Harold's Circus (1959)
- A Picture for Harold's Room (1960)
- Harold's ABC (1963)
Harold and the Purple Crayon provides examples of:
- Adaptation Expansion: The 13-episode HBO series narrated by Sharon Stone expanded upon the plots of the existing books and created several new plots that hadn't appeared in the original series.
- Art Initiates Life: Harold's crayon brings his drawings to life.
- Artistic License – Animal Care: In one episode of the HBO series, Harold has a goldfish that is kept in a fishbowl. Possibly played straight, as the fish dies of unknown causes toward the beginning of the episode.
- Art Shift: Each episode of the HBO series has Book Ends set in Harold's bedroom, which are animated more realistically than the rest of the backgrounds.
- Character Name and the Noun Phrase: The book's title, "Harold and the Purple Crayon," features the main character's name and the magical object he uses throughout the story.
- Death by Newbery Medal: In the HBO episode "I Remember Goldie", Harold's fish Goldie dies and he learns about death.
- Death Is a Sad Thing: Harold learns about death when his pet goldfish dies.
- The Faceless: Harold's mom in the animated series. She's typically only shown to the audience as a pair of hands, but when she appears in the episode "I Remember Goldie," she's depicted as a short-haired brunette woman with a red shirt and blue knee-length skirt, with her face tactfully hidden from the camera.
- Face of a Thug: The dragon who guards the apple tree has a menacing appearance that frightens Harold and his friends, but he later turns out to be a Gentle Giant.
- Gentle Giant: The dragon guarding the apple tree looks scary, but is actually very friendly.
- Gentle Giant Sauropod: Double subverted in "Blast From the Past". Harold goes to search for a giant sauropod to ride on, but when he finally encounters one, a Titanosaurus, he menaces Harold, his Pteranodon friend, and a herd of other dinosaurs. But after Harold saves him from a tarpit, the Titanosaurus turns out be a Gentle Giant and was only aggressive because the other dinosaurs ate his supply of pinecones that he had been saving for winter. Once Harold draws him enough giant pinecones to feed him throughout the whole winter, the sauropod returns the favor by giving Harold the ride that he wanted.
- The Homeward Journey: In each of the books, Harold uses his crayon to go on adventures of his own invention, and then must use it to send himself back home.
- Mental World: One possible explanation for Harold's fantastic adventures in the books. Played straight in the TV series, which strongly implies that Harold's escapades as nothing more than figments of his imagination.
- Nonstandard Character Design: Harold contrasts against the people he draws, who are in an even more simplified cartoony style than he is and are drawn with purple outlines. Harold, in contrast, is drawn with black outlines and his design is the only one with a color other than purple (his blue onesie).
- Painting the Frost on Windows: Harold creates and manipulates the reality of his world by drawing it.
- Present Tense Narrative: The original books are narrated in this manner.
- Reality Warper: Harold creates everything in his world with the purple crayon, which means he can bend his created world to fit his needs perfectly.
- Short-Runner: The animated TV series on HBO Family only lasted 13 episodes.
- Splash of Color: In the book series, Harold is the only thing that isn't comprised entirely of purple, by virtue of his solid black outline and blue onesie.
- Temper-Ceratops: In "Blast From the Past", the first dinosaur Harold encounters is an aggressive Triceratops that tries to trample him, only for Harold gets saved by the timely arrival of a Pteranodon. Subverted by the Centrosaurus that is among the friendly dinosaurs trying to flee from the volcanic eruption.
- Terrifying Tyrannosaur: Surprisingly subverted. While Tyrannosaurus does appear in "Blast From the Past", it's mainly in cameo appearances and always non-threatening. (It's Triceratops that plays the role of the "antagonistic" dinosaur.)
- The Voiceless: In the original books, Harold never speaks, likely due to being a young child. The various animated adaptations continued this trend by leaving him voiceless, though this trope is subverted in some episodes of the HBO series, where Harold would get to deliver a line every now and then.
- Weird Moon: The permanently crescent moon always accompanies Harold in his adventures.