Customer Reviews

Harold and the Purple Crayon: The Giant Garden

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If you love the playful adventures and magical places Harold creates using only his imagination and a purple crayon, don't buy these knock-offs. We own every Crockett Johnson book, and unfortunately bought several of these copy-cats. They do not hold a crayon to the simplicity and creativity of the originals.

I have read the original Harold books to my two-year old so many times, we both have most of them memorized. He never tires of them. So I bought three of this new series to expand our repertoire. We read each one once, and he never reached for them again.

In the originals, Harold creates fabulous tales and worlds with one continuous stroke of his purple crayon against a blank canvas. In these books, Harold moves through a fully-rendered, poorly drawn, heavily-outlined, colorized, real world. He uses the crayon occasionally as a kind of super power/magic wand to draw objects to get himself out of trouble. Here's an excerpt where Harold is chasing a ladybug:

Harold found his ladybug friend.
Oh no!
Harold's new friend was stuck in a spiderweb.
Harold jumped into the web.
It was sticky!
Harold drew a pair of scissors.
Snip, snip!
The ladybug was free!

If you are familiar with the lyrical cadence of Crockett's verse, you will note that it is sorely missing from these books, replaced by a perponderance of exclamation points. If you own all the Crockett books, treasure them, and read them again and again. Then buy some Suess.

It's not by Crockett Johnson but I can't tell the difference and neither can my daughter. Harold imagines what it would be like to be as small as a ladybug, how fun!!