Crockett Johnson was the pen name of the cartoonist and children’s book illustrator David Johnson Leisk, born in New York City in 1906, who first came to prominence as author of the groundbreaking comic strip, Barnaby. Besides illustrating his wife Ruth Krauss’s The Carrot Seed and The Happy Egg, Crockett Johnson created Harold and the Purple Crayon, and six other Harold adventures, which have sold more than two million copies worldwide. Crockett Johnson died in 1975.