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Philip Nel

Goodreads Author

Born

The United States

Website

https://philnel.com/

Twitter

philnel

Genre

Children's, Biography, Comics

Member Since

June 2017

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Books include Keywords for Children's Literature Second Edition (co-edited with Lissa Paul and Nina Christensen, NYU Press, 2021), Was the Cat in the Hat Black?: The Hidden Racism of Children's Literature and the Need for Diverse Books (Oxford UP, 2017), Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: How an Unlikely Couple Found Love, Dodged the FBI, and Transformed Children's Literature (UP Mississippi, 2012), Keywords for Children's Literature (co-edited with Lissa Paul, NYU Press, 2011), Tales for Little Rebels: A Collection of Radical Children's Literature (co-edited with Julia Mickenberg, NYU Press, 2008), The Annotated Cat: Under the Hats of Seuss and His Cats (Random House, 2007), Dr. Seuss: American Icon (Continuum, 2004), The Avant-Garde and Am ...more

358 posts
Philip Nel's Blog

Harold vs. AI

Crockett Johnson would turn 119 today, and Harold (of purple crayon fame) turns 70 this fall. What does it mean to celebrate Johnson or Harold today?

Crockett Johnson, Harold and the Purple Crayon (1955):

As I argue in “Turn off AI. Pick up a crayon,” it means to celebrate human creativity. In this piece, I suggest that Harold and the Purple Crayon is in fact “a manifesto for human creativity disguised as a children’s picture book”:

The opening p

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Philip Nel’s books

Average rating: 4.05 · 1,263 ratings · 267 reviews · 25 distinct works • Similar authors

	Was the Cat in the Hat Black?: The Hidden Racism of Children's Literature, and the Need for Diverse Books 4.09 avg rating — 432 ratings — published 2017 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Annotated Cat: Under the Hats of Seuss and His Cats (Picture Book) 4.07 avg rating — 112 ratings — published 2007 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: How an Unlikely Couple Found Love, Dodged the FBI, and Transformed Children's Literature 3.78 avg rating — 88 ratings — published 2012 — 11 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Dr. Seuss: American Icon 4.08 avg rating — 80 ratings — published 2003 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter Novels: A Reader's Guide 3.64 avg rating — 87 ratings — published 2001	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Keywords for Children's Literature by Philip Nel (Goodreads Author) (Editor), Lissa Paul (Editor) 3.98 avg rating — 61 ratings — published 1995 — 7 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	How to Draw the World: Harold and the Purple Crayon and the Making of a Children's Classic 4.20 avg rating — 15 ratings — published 2024 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Avant-Garde and American Postmodernity: Small Incisive Shocks 3.50 avg rating — 2 ratings — published 2002 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Feminite 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Lewende Water 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Philip Nel wrote a new blog post Harold vs. AI Crockett Johnson would turn 119 today, and Harold (of purple crayon fame) turns 70 this fall. What does it mean to celebrate Johnson or Harold today? Read more of this blog post »
Nov 14, 2025 02:00AM · like

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Quotes by Philip Nel (?)

“Children's books can break [the] silence. Reading the un-bowdlerized classics of children's literature can help young people understand that racism is not anomalous. It is embedded in the culture, and defended by cultural gatekeepers.”
― Philip Nel, Was the Cat in the Hat Black?: The Hidden Racism of Children's Literature, and the Need for Diverse Books

tags: children-s-literature, classic-literature, librarian, racism

0 likes

Philip’s Quotes

“There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal. I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge—even wisdom. Like art.
—Toni Morrison, “No Place for Self-Pity, No Room for Fear,” The Nation, 23 Mar. 2015”
― Toni Morrison

tags: art, fear, hope, inspirational

26 likes

“So you must wake up every morning knowing that no promise is unbreakable, least of all the promise of waking up at all. This is not despair. These are the preferences of the universe itself: verbs over nouns, actions over states, struggle over hope.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me

113 likes

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
—Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho (1983)”
― Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho

tags: failure, inspirational, try-again

7 likes

“But, luckily, he kept his wits and his purple crayon.”
― Crockett Johnson, Harold and the Purple Crayon

tags: art, creativity, hope, inspirational

12 likes