CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
EN/FR
Search
Menu
Research dossier · Arts & Letters

Harold and the Purple Crayon

1955 children's book by Crockett Johnson

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 22, 2026
Entity authoritySource title only
Source-derived summary

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, with more than 5 and a half million copies sold and being translated into more than 14 languages, it 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.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Harold and the Purple Crayon” is 1955 children's book by Crockett Johnson. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Harold, Purple and Crayon, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA productive route into publication, performance and collection histories when the underlying object or edition remains clearly identified. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1955—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Harold, Purple and Crayon is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “1955 children's book by Crockett Johnson” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The first chronological checks are 1955.

Critical limits

Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Harold and the Purple Crayon”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Harold and the Purple Crayon primary sources, Harold and the Purple Crayon archive and Harold research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Harold and the Purple Crayon”?
  2. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
  3. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Harold and the Purple Crayon” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.