Product Description

It is a hot night and Harold cannot sleep, so he grabs his purple crayon and draws a swimming hole. With his dog, Lilac, by his side, Harold finds more than just a way to cool down -- he meets fish of every shape and size, and even discovers some pirate treasure!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #19886 in Books
• Published on: 2003-09-01
• Released on: 2003-09-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 32 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780060001780
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Customer Reviews

Not nearly as good as the Original
We have several of the Harold books, but the ones written by Crockett Johnson are far superior. This is a cute tale of Harold and his dog Lilac scuba diving. The original book was in line drawings in black and white (well, purple and white) and these are done in full blown color leaving nothing to the child's imagination.

Just Awful
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 wanted to give it zero stars, but one is the minimum.

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, colorized, real world. Harold does not even whip out his crayon until page ten in Under the Sea. He uses the crayon occasionally as a kind of super power/magic wand to draw objects to get himself out of trouble. He is inexplicably (annoyingly) followed everywhere by a dog named Lilac, who adds nothing to the story. In addition, the vocabulary and scenes are obscure and unfamiliar subject matter for a young child. Here's an excerpt where Harold and the dog are in a submarine:

They saw catfish.
Lilac barked.
Then they saw dogfish.
Lilac wagged her tail.
A sawfish swam toward them.
Using its long, jagged nose,
the sawfish sawed a hole
in the side of the submarine!
Thinking quickly,
Harold drew scuba gear
for himself and Lilac.

The lyrical cadence of Crockett's verse is missing from these books. If you own all the Crockett books, treasure them, and read them again and again. Then buy some Suess.

Pointless purple crayon
The whole point of "Harold and the Purple Crayon" is that Harold creates what he needs and wants with his purple crayon. Therefore, in the original series of books, with the exception of Harold himself, everything is only a purple outline, because he has drawn it with his purple crayon. In this book, the drawings are in color, with only a purple outline around the multi-colored drawings. Is Harold now carrying around a 10 pack of colored pencils? How does this book demonstrate that Harold is drawing anything with his purple crayon? It doesn't make sense. The magic is absent. How sad that we think children need color more than imagination. They've taken away the entire plot and purpose of the book. "Harold and the Purple Crayon" was one of my favorite books as a small child, and I still read it to my three children, but sadly, this is nothing like the original.