You can write books about anything.
—RUTH KRAUSS, “How to Write a Book,” in How to Make an Earthquake (1954)
Though pleased by the swift sales and strong reviews of Harold and the Purple Crayon, Crockett Johnson viewed his success from a gently sardonic perspective. In November 1955, his clipping service sent him the Winston-Salem Journal and Sentinel’s single-sentence review by Dave Marion, age four: “Harold can draw whatever he wants with his purple crayon, and then it really is.” Bemused, he passed the clipping along to his editor: “Dear Ursula,” he wrote. “Just in case you missed this—It’s a very good review.”1
Ruth Krauss’s work was getting good reviews, too. An eight-page article in Elementary English proclaimed that she “has probably gone further than any other author in experimenting with the form and content of picture books.” Hailing her as at the vanguard of the “realistic ‘here and now’ type of story,” the piece attempted to define the Krauss aesthetic: “Children are neither cute darlings to be patronized, nor miniature adults to be civilized, but rather lively, well-organized people with … ambitions of their own” who “are fascinated by language” and “have an exuberance and joy in daily living, and an irrepressible sense of the ridiculous which may differ radically from an adult’s idea of what’s funny.” Singling out Krauss’s gifts as a poet, the essay’s author, Anne Martin, said that in A Very Special House, Krauss “has successfully depicted a world of riot, chaos, and confusion by employing a strictly disciplined, rhythmical, almost lyrical style in symmetrical form.” Martin wondered whether Krauss would “continue to work along the lines of I’ll Be You and You’ll Be Me, or perhaps strike out into completely new areas of experimentation.” For children, “a Ruth Krauss book ‘is to look at’ over and over again, to quote from and laugh at and talk about, and even (going along with Sendak’s illustrations) to hug lovingly and to drop off to sleep with.”2
Krauss continued to experiment. Charlotte and the White Horse, published in the fall of 1955, leaves behind the humor of her earlier child-authored stories. Unlike the playful nonsense of Bears, Charlotte’s verse is lyrical, with pictures that Maurice Sendak described as “my first attempt to unite poetry with William Blake.” As the seasons change
the wind and the rains are gone
the grass is coming out of the ground
the leaves are coming out of the trees
the people are coming out of doors.
Though Krauss makes the poetic cadences visible, she also signals that the words come from one of her child acquaintances: the entire text is in quotation marks, with the opening mark appearing before the first word on the first page and the closing mark after the last word on the final page. There is a touch of sadness when the father suggests that Charlotte’s colt “won’t make a good race horse so we will sell him.” Krauss repeats twice, “Now just sorrow is coming in,” and Sendak shows the sad little girl, turning away, looking down. Her father relents, and girl and horse share a tearful embrace.3
Sustained by Sendak’s delicate watercolors, this tale of Charlotte and her colt, Milky Way, is one of the best-reviewed Krauss books. The Horn Book called it a “little book of unusual beauty,” the New York Times Book Review’s Lois Palmer thought that Krauss “has shown again how clearly she understands how children feel and what is important to them,” and the New Yorker’s Katharine T. Kinkead found “a guilelessness and spontaneity” reminiscent of “the actual conversation of an imaginative child.” Sendak’s “exquisite pictures” (as the Chicago Tribune described them) won critical approval, too. The Times thought the “soft tone” of his art apt, and Kinkead believed that “the softly colored illustrations” had “exactly caught” the “tenderness and exultation” of “the girl’s love song to her pet.” The New York Herald Tribune went even further, saying that Sendak’s “pictures match and surpass the tenderness of the text, giving it all a dreamlike fairy tale quality.”4
Both Nordstrom and Susan Carr liked the dummy for Harold’s Fairy Tale but suggested revisions. Nordstrom asked Johnson to change “(page 12) that business of making himself smaller and (page 16) making himself bigger,” when he draws the mouse hole into the castle and later draws stairs to measure his height. Telling rather than showing, Johnson had written, “Harold made himself smaller” next to the illustration of Harold drawing the hole and a mouse larger than himself, and “Harold made himself bigger” next to the illustration of him drawing the steps. Nordstrom and Carr thought this “too intricate,” with Nordstrom adding, “I started to say ‘too intricate for children,’ but I have to admit that it missed me entirely and I am in my late ’teens, as you very well know.” Johnson took Nordstrom’s advice, allowing images rather than words to convey most of the meaning in the book. According to Johnson, “Without telling readers over seven Harold ‘made himself small’ (a flat statement of a magical act) we let them get the ‘joke’ by themselves. Readers under seven, who can’t be expected to understand relativity, will know perfectly well that Harold made himself small (and by magic) without being told. Readers who are exactly seven let’s not sell any books to.” On Christmas Eve, he sent out the revised dummy along with a promise to create the finished drawings by early January.5
As 1955 drew to a close, both Johnson and Krauss had become successful children’s authors. However, as a newspaper profile noted, they never competed with one another. Instead, they worked—usually separately but sometimes together—on books “that enchant adults as well as children.” Krauss continued to work during the daytime, but Johnson was now more flexible, drawing in the day and “writing at night, away from the interruption of meter man and telephone.” When he needed a break, he liked to step out and watch the boats go by or go sailing. Krauss enjoyed swimming at the Norwalk Y. And both maintained professional interests beyond the world of juvenile publishing. Johnson was optimistic that his adjustable mattress would find a market, and Krauss still harbored ambitions of writing for an adult audience.6
Some prominent adults were reading her children’s books. In the fall of the following year, Henry Miller, author of The Tropic of Cancer (at the time banned in the United States), wrote to Harper that he thought A Hole Is to Dig “a wonderful little book” and asked for a copy for his son, Tony, plus another half dozen to give away as gifts. Nordstrom passed along Miller’s comments to Krauss. The notion of a Henry Miller blurb for A Hole Is to Dig must have amused both women.7
Johnson moved on to the jacket design for Harold’s Fairy Tale, feeling both modest about the first Harold book’s success and keen to repeat it. Given that reviewers of children’s books “are so extravagantly kind to all the books they review,” the Horn Book’s praise indicated “no more than that the reviewer accepted the book as run of the mill.” He wondered, “If quotes sell at all, wouldn’t an adjective or two from The New York Times, The New Yorker, or even The Chicago Tribune mean more to a purchaser?” Moreover, although he had “discouraged the use of the word ‘Barnaby’ in the past,” “recently in two public ventures it has been made plain to me that ‘Barnaby’ is much better known than my own name.” Perhaps the cover of the new book should mention his most famous creation. Carr agreed about referring to Barnaby but assured Johnson that the Horn Book would have “a far better chance” of influencing libraries than would any of the other publications.8
Crockett Johnson, illustration from Time for Spring (New York: Harper, 1957). Reprinted with the permission of the Estate of Ruth Krauss, Stewart I. Edelstein, Executor. All Rights Reserved.
Harold’s first adventures had done so well that by April 1956, two animated cartoon companies were proposing Harold series for short-subject release in movie theaters. Constable sought rights for the United Kingdom edition of Harold and the Purple Crayon. In Denmark, Skrifola wanted to publish it. And Johnson was already contemplating a third Harold book for release in the fall of 1957.9
Inspiration for another book came from Johnson’s dog, Gonsul, the fourteen-year-old son of the dog who had inspired Barnaby’s talking terrier, Gorgon. As Dave liked to point out, Gonsul “neither talks nor sings. But his pantomime is excellent.” In the spring of 1956, Dave sent Ursula a dummy for Terrible Terrifying Toby, in which Toby the puppy encounters “terrible and terrifying” things in his backyard—a squirrel, a frog, and a sparrow. He discovers that if he growls, they leave, making him feel more “terrible and terrifying.” But when he enters the house and encounters a mirror, he frightens himself.
That same spring, Johnson also sent Nordstrom a dummy for a very different book, Time for Spring, in which he balanced melancholy with humor. In clean, elegant prose and gray watercolors, the book tells the story of Irene, who is very ready for winter to end, and of her O’Malley-esque snowman, who is not. Irene reluctantly makes “a very little snowman” because she has “very little interest left in things that had to do with winter.” He comes to life, and, though he proves a rather obnoxious playmate, Irene remains concerned that spring threatens his existence. When she tries to tell him about his impending demise, he brushes off her concern: “Spring won’t come, while I’m here.” The two of them go back and forth, debating the incompatibility of his presence and that of spring. When the snow melts and she sees the snowman’s hat lying on the grass, Irene says, “He went away, but he left his hat,” adding, “I’ll save it for him for next year.” Nordstrom found the tale “rather sad, as well as funny, I think. And I like it.” Harper reader Bunny Aleshire also approved: “The recognition that you must lose something to gain something is not something to be expected in a children’s book.”10
This sense of loss, atypical for a Crockett Johnson story, may have many emotional roots. His niece, Bonnie Frank, who had been born in 1947 with a form of mental retardation, died in 1955. As in Irene’s response to the snowman, Bonnie’s siblings Harold (born 1953) and Tony (born 1948) may not have fully understood the meaning of their sister’s death. Dave’s father had died when he was a teenager, and his mother died a little over two years before he sent in this manuscript. His good friend Gene Wallace also had died eighteen months earlier, leaving a behind an eight-year-old daughter, who, like Irene, had dark hair. Nina is the first of more than two dozen children thanked at the beginning of Ruth’s I’ll Be You and You Be Me (1954).
The last of the “children” thanked is “Ursie,” aka Ursula Nordstrom, who accepted both Time for Spring and Terrible, Terrifying Toby, paying Johnson a thousand-dollar advance for each book. With William R. Scott allowing Who’s Upside Down? to go out of print, Johnson hoped that Harper would reissue the book, which he called “a supplementary text book in elementary cosmology,” but Nordstrom declined.11
When he visited the Harper offices, Johnson’s reserved, quiet demeanor sometimes puzzled people. His characters were adventurous and outgoing, but he seemed shy. Occasionally, however, close friends would glimpse of another side of him. On one occasion, he commented to Maurice Sendak that one of the young women working at Harper had “a fantastic ass.” Though they were well out of earshot, Sendak was shocked: “I didn’t even know he knew the word ‘ass.’ It was a glimpse into ‘Wow, this is a hot patootie, this guy.’” Laughing at the memory, Sendak added, “And that was the only mad expression I ever heard coming out of Dave Johnson. And he was right: she had a great ass.” Similarly, although Ruth and Dave rarely publicly displayed their affection for each other, they were very loving in private and around their closest friends. Nina Rowand Wallace remembered seeing Ruth “come up from behind and hug” Dave, “cuddl[ing] that wonderful bald head of his very affectionately.” The two slept in separate beds and bedrooms not because they lacked passion for each other but because Dave was nocturnal and Ruth was not. Both were awake in the afternoons and evenings.12
Acutely aware that different people need different beds, Johnson pursued his plan of marketing the four-way-adjustable mattress. In late May or early June 1956, he met with Conrad Hilton to see if his chain of hotels might be interested in buying the four-way adjustable mattress. Johnson also contacted mattress manufacturers, hoping to entice them to produce his invention. In June, Johnson wrote to Nordstrom that he wanted to do a “definitive” Barnaby book “soon, but this week and next I have to spend tome time founding a vast industrial empire with my lawyer and a rubber tycoon and a mattress mogul. I will be around to bother you the week after that.” By July, the Sealy mattress company was considering producing Johnson’s invention. Johnson worked on other projects as well, illustrating William H. Whyte Jr.’s “Budgetism: Opiate of the Middle Class” for the May 1956 issue of Fortune, Bernadine Cook’s The Little Fish That Got Away (1956), and Franklyn M. Branley and Eleanor K. Vaughn’s Mickey’s Magnet (1956).13
On weekends, Sendak continued to visit Johnson and Krauss, working on her books—in 1956, The Birthday Party—and relishing his time with them. Typically, Krauss was energetic, unpredictable, and tiring, while Johnson was calm, steady, and laconic. With Johnson, Sendak would sit and talk quietly. In his early fifties, Johnson had the “big burly body” of an ex-football player, his chest and arms starting to go soft. He was a large man with a gentle demeanor. Though much smaller, Krauss was the “jumping jack,” the “full-color stage performance,” “this explosion of energy and laughter and rage.” With her lustrous hair piled on her head, a few long strands falling down the sides of her face, Krauss would throw back her head and laugh when she was in a good mood. When she was in a bad mood, “she was a banshee!” Sendak “never understood” Krauss and Johnson’s marriage: “He was as quiet as she was noisy. He was as calm as she was like a hurricane. And yet it seemed to work.”14
Ruth Krauss. Image courtesy of the Estate of Ruth Krauss. Reprinted with the permission of the Estate of Ruth Krauss, Stewart I. Edelstein, Executor. All Rights Reserved.
It worked well for Sendak, too: The Johnson-Krauss house continued provide him with a “place of total safety” where he could work and be with people who understood him. To Sendak, “Dave was the father I always wanted. And Ruth was a bit too much like the mother I already had.” Yet where Maurice’s mother seemed consumed by her darker moods, Krauss “somehow … was stronger and fiercer and fought that depression.”15
Despite her bubbly, outgoing nature, Ruth remained plagued by anxieties. During the 1940s, she discussed her problems with her physician; by 1956, she was seeing a psychiatrist, traveling into New York City for her weekly session at least until the mid-1960s. Her therapist was Dr. Daniel E. Schneider, whom another former patient described as “like a sledgehammer.” A strict Freudian, Schneider saw many creative people, including novelist Tom Wolfe. Schneider liked and respected Ruth, admiring her creativity and success as an artist. He believed that art was not the product of neurosis. Instead, liberation from neuroses left artists “free to develop … technical creative mastery” of their art. He considered writer’s block “the neurotic fear and separation of intuition and cognition,” and his counseling apparently helped Ruth overcome that hurdle, because she published prolifically during this period. Ruth found Schneider’s ideas so persuasive that she referred to them in conversation. Moving her hands as she spoke, Ruth would mention his opinion and then giggle to cover her embarrassment.16
Crockett Johnson, last page from and front cover for Merry Go Round (New York: Harper, 1958). Reprinted with the permission of the Estate of Ruth Krauss, Stewart I. Edelstein, Executor. All Rights Reserved.
By October 1956, Johnson had completed his third children’s book of the year; like Time for Spring, it charted new territory. Merry Go Round: A Story That Doesn’t End, was precisely that. With pages to be lifted up rather than turned from right to left and illustrated only on the front side, Merry Go Round invites endless page turning, and Johnson proposed binding it with rings to encourage this activity. The center of every page features the boy on the merry-go-round, but the background shifts, recording the child’s motion. Beneath each picture is a single line of text, minimally punctuated, with the sentence continuing on the next page. The last page (“on he rode, past the yellow sign and on”) does not end with a period, leading the reader directly back to the first page (the front cover), which has the words “and round and round and round and round and round” at the bottom. This experimental work presented several design challenges. When rings proved too expensive, Harper opted for spiral binding. However, since spirals tear pages more easily, they used larger, heavier paper stock. Agreeing to a cover, that did not bear the author’s name, Harper wrapped the book in a thin paper band with Johnson’s name and the book’s subtitle, publisher, and price.17
As the year came to an end, Johnson prepared to send Nordstrom the final version of yet another book, Harold’s Trip to the Sky. Again breaking with picture book conventions, he wanted black pages. More than half the book would follow Harold through the darkness of outer space. To achieve this effect, Johnson proposed that he make his “own photographic negatives, … laying in the color by my own hand.” Overall, this process would be cheaper for Harper than having the printer and engraver make the black pages, but it would increase Johnson’s out-of-pocket costs, and he asked the publisher to reimburse him. He did not mind spending his own money, but “I find that many people nowadays like to receive such bills because they can take them off their corporate income tax, thereby cutting down on the number of atomic bombs the government can make.” Harper agreed to the reimbursement.18
As Johnson’s comment about atomic bombs reflected, the political atmosphere had shifted. By 1956–57, McCarthyism had lost some of its hold on the popular imagination, and people on the left were speaking out. The Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955), and the integration of Little Rock’s Central High School (1957) had begun “to reshape the national and political agenda.” Registering this change in the national mood, Harold’s Trip to the Sky contains some topical satire, marking Johnson’s first venture into political commentary since Barnaby ended its run. After drawing himself into a desert, Harold thinks that “there isn’t much else to do … except play in the sand.” Then, however, “he remembered how the government has fun on the desert. It shoots off rockets.”19
Though topical, the specific target of this wry observation is trickier to pin down. In the context of the 1956 presidential contest, Johnson may be mocking Eisenhower’s push for guided missiles, Stevenson’s call for more missile spending, or both ideas. Whatever its target, Dave’s sly, politically ambiguous reference would likely escape the notice of reviewers, the following fall. Or would it?20
That fall, most reviewers saw in Ruth and Maurice’s latest—I Want to Paint My Bathroom Blue—another beautiful trip into the “innermost feelings of little children,” as the New York Times’s Lois Palmer wrote. “Maurice Sendak’s pictures show the happiness and activity of the little boy in his pretend world,” and children will want to “pretend along with him.” The Christian Science Monitor thought the book “a charming bit of fantasy for imaginative small children, the kind that sets them to dreaming and satisfies something that wants expression deep down inside.” Like Krauss, the little boy in the book likes open windows and believes in racial equality. Sendak drew the child’s friends in a rainbow of colors (orange, blue, brown, purple, yellow, pink), standing side by side, smiling and waving. Krauss considered this depiction “a definite statement in ‘race’ integration,” and although reviewers overlooked this theme, Krauss had at last written a antiracist children’s book.21
After completing a “child-language brochure” for the American Friends Service Committee, Krauss moved on to another project that would reunite her with Phyllis Rowand. Dedicated to Rowand’s daughter, Nina, “when she was a monkey,” Monkey Day marks the first time Krauss recycled an earlier story. The version that had appeared in I’ll Be You and You Be Me presents “a new holiday and a good song / if you have a monkey for a friend friend friend.” A little girl explains the holiday, sings the song (a version of “Happy Birthday”), and concludes with some “special talk / for talking to monkeys”: “Cheep cheep cheep.” Losing the gentle whimsy of the original, Monkey Day is filled with unnecessary details—presents, a wedding, and several dozen little monkeys.22
The decision to rework an earlier tale signaled Krauss’s creative restlessness. In a dozen years, she had published seventeen children’s books, had several other completed manuscripts, and was working on even more. Though she had done well as a writer for children, she never let go of her ambition to write for adults, and in the fall of 1957, she took Kay Boyle’s ten-week course in the history and analysis of the short story. Johnson, too, was seeking new outlets. He considered new types of children’s books and pushed the boundaries of his popular Harold series. Both authors were in the midst of a period of bold experimentation.