Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss

September 15, 2012

In this insightful dual biography of Crockett Johnson (Harold and the Purple Crayon) and Ruth Krauss (A Hole Is To Dig), who were married but produced most of their work separately, Nel (children's literature, Kansas State Univ.; Dr. Seuss: American Icon) makes a case for their enduring influence on children's literature through their less-than-perfect child protagonists, minimalist drawings, and use of the child's point of view. Johnson's and Krauss's children's books have remained in print for more than 50 years and have sold millions of copies. Nel also explores Johnson's roles as political cartoonist (his work in the magazine New Masses garnered attention from the McCarthy-era FBI) and abstract painter and Krauss's collaborations with later-famous illustrators Marc Simont and Maurice Sendak (whom Nel interviewed), as well as her other work. Nel's use of the couple's personal papers and publishers' archives adds considerable depth. VERDICT This strongly researched book will please scholars of children's literature and those more broadly studying American culture in the decades after World War II.--Alison M. Lewis, Drexel Univ., Philadelphia

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2012
A thoroughgoing, if dispassionate, portrait of two relentlessly creative types whose contributions to children's literature--epochal as they are--make up only part of the story. While Krauss' A Hole Is To Dig (1952) and Johnson's Harold and the Purple Crayon (1955) are well-known classics of children's literature, Nel (Director, Kansas St. Univ. Program in Children's Literature; The Avant-Garde and American Postmodernity, 2002, etc.) makes sturdy cases for regarding Johnson's comic strip Barnaby as a landmark in the history of cartoons, and Krauss as a significant creator of avant-garde poetry and theater pieces for adults in the 1960s and '70s. Aside from shared interests in each other and in leftist politics, the two seem better defined here by their differences: He was big, quiet and bearlike, she was small and intense; he thought of himself as a cartoonist, she as primarily a writer. His most renowned published work largely reflects his own experiences and inner child; hers (for younger audiences) was inspired by observations of, and overheard remarks by, actual children. They collaborated on just four of their many dozens of books. Later in their lives, while she was making a splash in the New York cultural scene, he took to painting visual representations of mathematical and geometrical formulas--many of which are now in the Smithsonian Institution. Succumbing only occasionally to the temptation to drop tedious lists of family, friends or famous guests at various functions, Nel draws on a decade of archival research and more than 80 interviews to track their personal and professional relationships--notably with Maurice Sendak, whose career was launched with his illustrations for A Hole Is To Dig, and the entertainingly fiery editor Ursula Nordstrom--and multifaceted careers. Likely to become the go-to biography of these two iconic figures--for specialists, but not just those in children's literature.

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