Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss

by Philip Nel

  “Is this what you eat for breakfast?” shows a girl eating grass and another with a hat in her mouth; boys are shown taking a bite out of a piano leg and digging up worms. Some of Johnson’s unpublished sketches, including “Is This Your Pet?,” display a darker sense of humor that recalls the New Yorker cartoons of Charles Addams, which Johnson knew, and the books of Edward Gorey, first published in 1953 and 1954.13

  Published by William R. Scott in the spring of 1955, Is This You? garnered positive reviews, with the New York Times Book Review’s Ellen Lewis Buell hailing this “very funny” and “daffiest of do-it-yourself books” as saying “more than it means to” and the Bulletin of the Children’s Book Center praising the book’s “rollicking type of humor in the combination of picture and text.” A few months earlier, I’ll Be You and You Be Me had been released to glowing reviews. The New York Herald Tribune’s Louise Seaman Bechtel called it “probably the best combination thus far of the Krauss selective reporting on the talk of small children, with the Sendak genius of carrying out their ideas or carrying them further, in hundreds of tiny figures.” Buell was struck by the range of emotional experience Krauss captured and thought that Sendak’s “small, delicately drawn” illustrations had “a force and an ebullience out of all proportion to their size.”14

  Crockett Johnson, sketches for “Is This Your Pet?,” a sequence not included in Is This You? Image courtesy of the Northeast Children’s Literature Collection, Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut, Storrs. Reprinted with the permission of the Estate of Ruth Krauss, Stewart I. Edelstein, Executor. All Rights Reserved.

  The Krauss-Johnson collaboration, How to Make an Earthquake, released in the fall of 1954, received mixed reviews. The book features games invented and explained by children, including Nina Rowand Wallace and Emily Levine. Krauss had watched her young neighborhood friends play and thought that rather than make another activity book for children, she would make one by children. The resulting book offers advice on “how to make sitting interesting” (“lie on your back in a big chair and put your legs up the back of the chair”), “how to balance a peanut on your nose” (place a sticky raisin on your nose and stick the peanut on top of the raisin), and “a good way to entertain telephone callers”:

  When the phone rings, answer it.

  First, you should ask who it is. And then, ask if they’d like to hear some entertainment because maybe they wouldn’t. But if they do, you should tell them, “Hold the line a minute, please.” Then sing a little bit, or recite a little, or if you know a piano piece you could play a little of that. Just do a little at first. This is testing. Then go back to the phone and ask, “Did you hear me?” If they answer yes, say, “Hold the line a minute, please,” again. And then you can play your whole piece for them, or whatever is your talent.15

  Some reviewers saw the humor: The Christian Science Monitor’s Rae Emerson Donlon found “just the right blend of sense and nonsense,” and the New York Times’s Lois Palmer enjoyed Krauss’s “close understanding of what tickles young children, of how they like to mix reality with make-believe.” But others saw the book as “written in the tone of an adult laughing at children” and as lacking “the childlike qualities of language and humor that have made Miss Krauss’ earlier books so popular with children and adults alike.” At least one reader wrote to Harper to claim that the book was not for children but “for adults to enjoy after three or four cocktails”; the book’s ideas ran “contrary to any parent or teacher trying to teach a youngster good manners.” Johnson and Krauss believed that such critics had missed the point, and he was particularly amused by librarians who cataloged the book “with other how-to books such as how to collect stamps and how to sew a seam.”16

  Ruth and Dave had little time to dwell on reviews that fall. In August, Ruth had “a bad back attack,” and she was still bedridden in September. Afraid of needing an operation, she coped with the pain by having her doctor (likely her neighbor, Abe Levine) give her a shot before bedtime. Immediately after Ruth had her nightly shot, Dave raced downstairs, dished up a bowl of chocolate ice cream, and then raced back upstairs so that Ruth could have a few spoonfuls before the drugs sent her off to dreamland.17

  While Ruth was lying in her upstairs bedroom, Phyllis Rowand was mourning. On 3 September 1954, Gene Wallace’s car collided with a truck on Noroton Hill in Stamford. He was killed instantly. Wallace was thirty-six. His daughter was not yet nine. Dave and Ruth grew even closer to Nina and Phyllis. Later that month, after Ruth was upright again, daughter and mother began joining her and Dave for dinner at least once a week. As an appetizer, they had graham crackers and V8. For dinner, Ruth might prepare spaghetti with sauce, accompanied by artichokes and sour cream. After they had eaten, Ruth would lie down on the living room rug and go to sleep. Dave, Phyllis, and Ruth (while awake) would talk, including Nina in the conversation as an equal. Sometimes, George Annand would join them. Nina did not always understand all of the talk of noteworthy books or the latest news in I. F. Stone’s Weekly. But she was glad to be included.18

  Dave became a surrogate father and mentor to Nina. He built her a Nina-sized table and chair and set them up near his own. His workspace, in the front room, faced the house’s front windows, looking out onto the porch and to the sea beyond. Behind and to the left of his table sat Nina at her table, looking out onto the side porch and Crockett Street, where she and her parents had moved just before her father’s death. She spent many hours drawing at her desk while Dave smoked cigarettes and drew at his desk, which “was always free of clutter,” with “sharp pencils and paper at hand—ready for action.” Behind her sat the bulky television set with its small screen. Sitting there, drawing, Nina felt fortunate and “in the center of the action” but able to concentrate on her work, just as Dave concentrated on his.19

  Upstairs, Krauss was creating art for I Want to Paint My Bathroom Blue and text for Charlotte and the White Horse. She also had three new projects in mind. One was on children’s dreams and ideas about dreaming. Another was a book of songs. Her third would be “‘natural’ as a follow up” to A Hole Is to Dig. New Words for Old would feature children’s “word-inventions”—used either “when they don’t know the correct ones” or invented “for fun” when “they do know the correct word.” As she explained, a child might use biggie to refer to a grown-up or not-turtle to refer to any animal that isn’t a turtle. Krauss also overheard three children discussing trikes and bikes:

  A: “I have a two-wheeler.

  B: “I have a three-wheeler.”

  C: “I have a broken-wheeler.”

  Nordstrom was skeptical: Some of these “new words” sounded like “just plain baby-talk” to her. “It isn’t that I don’t trust you, dear,” she wrote, “But couldn’t you carry it out just a bit more before we, you and I, come to final conclusions about how inevitable it would be as a follow-up to the sacred Hole????” Krauss disagreed: “They are real word-inventions … & they are the child’s direct observation…. A complete collection will take me 6 months to a year’s play with the idea, that’s all.” The book, Open House for Butterflies, did not appear until 1960.20

  Johnson wrote more swiftly and with a sharper focus than Krauss did. Within a couple of months of acquiring his new officemate and becoming a surrogate father, he began writing a children’s book about a boy and his crayon. This book would garner the sort of acclaim Dave had not seen since Barnaby’s heyday, and it would firmly establish him as Crockett Johnson, author of children’s books, the career for which he is best known today.

  16

  HAROLD

  But, luckily, he kept his wits and his purple crayon.

  —CROCKETT JOHNSON, Harold and the Purple Crayon (1955)

  In November 1954, Dave finished dummies for Harold and the Purple Crayon. The previous year, his sister, Else Leisk Frank, and her husband, Leonard Frank, had adopted a boy, whom they named Harold David, after Harold Gold, the attorney who helped with the adoption, and her fat
her. Though Dave was not especially close to his sister, their mother’s death eleven months earlier had brought them together, and he named his character after his nephew. The week before Thanksgiving, he sent the manuscript to Ursula Nordstrom.1

  Had she known that the FBI was investigating Johnson, Nordstrom would not have cared. After learning that Howard Selsam, the husband of Harper author Millicent Selsam, was being called before McCarthy’s committee, Nordstrom replied, “I don’t care, as long as he’s not a Republican.”2

  Though politically sympathetic to Johnson, Nordstrom was not initially enthusiastic about Harold and the Purple Crayon: “It doesn’t seem to be a good children’s book to me but I’m often wrong—and this post–Children’s Book Week Monday finds me dead in the head. I’d probably pass up Tom Sawyer today.” She offered to reread the manuscript when she was “more caught up” and passed it along to reader Ann Powers, whom she described as “young … and less tired than I am.” Powers was confused: “I don’t think it is anything sensational, but it is a little different” and “even bears rereadings.” She liked “falling into the sea, the sailboat” but also doubted “came up thinking fast (pun?)” and the “1st picture drawing a sail.” She thought children would enjoy “the buildings” but also wondered “why he should look for his room in both a small house and a large apt. building.” By the end of her report, she conceded, “the more I look at the book, the more I like it,” concluding, “This is undoubtedly one of those books which are indescribable in copy.”3

  Three weeks later, after making a few minor changes in accordance with suggestions from Nordstrom, Johnson returned the revised Harold to Harper. Nordstrom apologized for her “lukewarm and unenthusiastic” initial reaction: “I really think it is going to make a darling book, and I certainly was wrong at first.” Her recent successes had made her overconfident in first impressions: “The Harper children’s books have had such a good fall, on so many lists, etc. etc., and I was feeling a little good—not satisfied, you understand, but I thought gosh I’m really catching on to things, I bet, and pretty soon it ought to get easier. And then I stubbed my toe on Harold and his damned purple crayon.”4

  Page from FBI file of David Johnson Leisk, 20 December 1954.

  On 20 December 1954, Harper sent Johnson a $750 advance and a contract for Harold and the Purple Crayon. The same day, the FBI’s New Haven office asked J. Edgar Hoover for “Bureau authority” to interview Johnson. The New Haven agents cited their uncertainty about whether Johnson “has defected from his participation in Communist front groups or from the Communist Party.” Their “informants [are] negative re current CP activity,” but the G-men wanted to be sure. They hoped that he would become an informant, which meant that the communists would have to believe that he remained loyal to them. So the FBI had to tread carefully.5

  On 4 January 1955, Hoover authorized an interview with Johnson but cautioned, “Due to his employment and the extent of his activity in [Communist] front groups he should be interviewed only within the restrictions laid down by the Security Informant Program.” In January and February, the FBI’s New Haven office again had Johnson under surveillance; agents discovered that he worked mostly at home, leaving only to go to the post office, “at which time it was not appropriate to contact him.” When asked if agents might interview Johnson at home, Hoover said no: “Due to his former high position in Communist circles and due to his occupation as a writer it is not believed advisable to accede to your request. Subject should only be interviewed away from his home by experienced agents and the utmost discretion should be used in the conduct of the interview.”6

  On 5 April, a federal agent visited the Rowayton house of Kay Boyle and Joseph Franckenstein and attempted to confiscate her passport on the grounds that she was then a Communist. Boyle refused and told the agent to see her lawyer. Agents had even less success with Johnson: On 22 April, the New Haven FBI office reported that attempts to interview him “have not been successful. It has required that agents stay outside of subject’s home in order to contact him. It has been noted that on the days attempts have been made to interview him, he confined himself to his home entirely. He has been observed working at a desk in his home.” In other words, they could see Johnson, he could see them, and he would not come out.7

  In May, Hoover suggested that interviewing Johnson might not be worthwhile “in the light of the difficulties involved.” Fearing adverse publicity, the FBI gave up: “It is possible that if the interview were conducted under any type of adverse circumstances that it may become embarrassing to the Bureau at a later date, therefore this case is being placed in a Closed Status in the New Haven Division.” Case closed, four months before Harold’s debut.8

  Though disappointed by the mixed response to How to Make an Earthquake, Krauss was looking forward to the fall publication of Charlotte and the White Horse and working on her next book. For three years, she had been collecting paintings by Rowayton schoolchildren for a visual version of A Hole Is to Dig. Where A Hole used children’s words, this new book would use their art.9

  As summer approached, Ruth spent less time visiting children in the Rowayton and Norwalk schools and instead swam or sailed with Dave. Children, however, kept coming to her. As a May 1955 newspaper profile noted, “The neighborhood small fry are in and out of [Johnson and Krauss’s] comfortable house. The Johnsons are known as likely customers for Girl Scout cookies and always have a cookie available for young visitors.” Krauss explained, “I like to listen to children talking. Certain things come out that I could not catch any other way.”10

  While Krauss’s busy mind gathered new material, yet another adaptation of Barnaby was in the works—this time, a weekly television show. Johnson was also contemplating other ideas for children’s books. That February, he began to consider a book about children’s imaginary friends, such as those outlined in his mock-scholarly essay “Fantastic Companions,” which appeared in the June 1955 issue of Harper’s. Though Mr. O’Malley was “a purely fictional creation,” parents had written to him about “the astonishing creatures that visited their homes.” Johnson introduced readers to six different companions, among them Bivvy, who “knocks things over and breaks things,” immediately fleeing the scene of the accident, leaving only young Mildred “by herself amidst the debris,” and Henry M.’s friend the Gumgaw, “who ‘is big, with a face like an elephant’ and who ‘talks all the time’ in a voice that surprisingly, considering his bulk, is pitched high enough to be mistaken through a closed door for Henry’s own.” Johnson asked Nordstrom about making the concept into a book, but the imminent publication of Harold and the Purple Crayon drove the idea from their minds. The book also eclipsed Johnson’s receipt of a patent for his four-way adjustable mattress, though he was optimistic about the invention’s success and told the New York Times, “I’d love to go into a motel and be asked how I’d like my bed.”11

  Published in the fall of 1955, Harold and the Purple Crayon was a runaway hit. The first print run of ten thousand sold so quickly that Harper ordered a new print run of seventy-five hundred by November. The book encourages reflection on the relationship between representation and reality. Like the New Yorker cartoons of Saul Steinberg, Johnson’s drawings are metapictures, with meanings that shift as they develop. What seems to be a curve becomes a balloon, as a line of Us morphs into an ocean, and all drawings become as real as the artist character creating them.12

  Harold and the Purple Crayon is also about Crockett Johnson. Where Ruth Krauss based her characters on children she observed, her husband created his child characters from his own experiences. As a child, Dave loved to draw, just as Harold does. Like Harold, Dave was a bald artist who worked mostly at night. (Of his tendency to draw bald characters, Dave said, “I draw people without hair because it’s so much easier! Besides, to me, people with hair look funny.”) Though the crayon is purple, the cover of the book is brown, Johnson’s favorite color. He lived in a brown house, furnished with comfortable brown lea
ther chairs, and drove a brown 1948 Austin Tudor sedan. He wore chocolate-colored pants and T-shirts, often ordered from the Sears catalog. When the weather was cooler, he wore brown cardigan sweaters. If he needed to be more formal, he wore one of his brown suits. In the morning, there was no question about how to dress: brown goes with brown. The clean, unadorned style of his art, identical to Harold’s artistic style, echoes Johnson’s sartorial minimalism. That Harold should greet the viewer from a brown cover is apt because both Harold and his purple crayon are imaginative extensions of Johnson.13

  Nordstrom immediately began encouraging Johnson to write a sequel: “I know you don’t want to do Harold and His Green Crayon or Harold and His Orange Crayon, but I honestly think further adventures of Harold would sell and not be a cheap idea, either.” Johnson had begun a new comic strip about a dog, Barkis, in May 1955, but it had not caught on. Brad Anderson’s Marmaduke had made its debut the summer before and cornered the market for single-panel dog-related strips, so the syndicate dropped Barkis in early November. In response to Nordstrom’s suggestion, therefore, Johnson was free to get right to work on Harold’s Fairy Tale, finishing a dummy by mid-December. From that point onward, writing and illustrating children’s books became Johnson’s primary occupation: Over the next ten years, he would create five more Harold books and a dozen others.14