Crockett Johnson

David Johnson Leisk, who worked under the pen name Crockett Johnson, was born on October 20, 1906, in New York City and died on July 11, 1975, in Norwalk, Connecticut. He is best remembered for two distinct bodies of work: the long-running newspaper comic strip *Barnaby* (1942–1952) and the beloved children's book series beginning with *Harold and the Purple Crayon*. Johnson's path into comics began with magazine cartoons before he created *Barnaby*, a whimsical strip about a young boy and his cigar-chomping fairy godfather, Mr. O'Malley. The strip ran for a decade and was praised for its gentle satire and imaginative storytelling. His *Harold* books, starting in 1955, became classics of children's literature, celebrated for their minimalist art and concept of a child drawing his own reality with a single purple crayon. In a surprising later turn, from 1965 until his death, Johnson produced over a hundred abstract paintings exploring mathematical and physical concepts; eighty of these are held by the National Museum of American History. Our catalog credits him as artist, inker, or writer on 14 issues, primarily for collections of *Barnaby* and *Barnaby and Mr. O'Malley*, as well as contributions to the *Little Lit* anthology. He received no major formal awards for his comics work, but his influence on both sequential art and children's literature remains substantial.