BookRank

Reading order

Harold reading order

Crockett Johnson

  1. Harold and the Purple Crayon1955
  2. Harold's Fairy Tale1956
  3. Harold's Trip to the Sky1957
  4. Harold's Circus1959
  5. A Picture for Harold’s Room1960
  6. Harold's ABC Board Book1963
8.18.1 / 10
148 ratings
Score
6 volumes
Volumes
1955–1963
Published
about 7 h
Reading time
Completed
Status
Children’s books
Genre

Quick answer

Harold and the Purple Crayon
Start withHarold and the Purple Crayon1955 · Volume 1 of 6
Open the volume →Buy the first volumeListen to the audiobook

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Publication order

6 volumes1955–1963Completed

  • Harold and the Purple Crayon, from 1955, follows a little boy who draws his own world as he walks through it, a moon, a path, a sea when he needs one, until he draws his way home to bed.
  • A small, quietly brilliant book about imagination, and by far the most read and best rated here.
  • The sequels take Harold into fairy tales, the sky and the circus.

A plan for the whole series

6 volumes, 384 pages, about 7 hours. At 45 min a day that is 9 days.

Stages

This series fits in one stage. You finish around November 7, 2026.

  1. Stage 17 h9 daysby November 7, 2026
    • 1. Harold and the Purple Crayon1955 · 64 pages · 1 h
    • 2. Harold's Fairy Tale1956 · 64 pages · 1 h
    • 3. Harold's Trip to the Sky1957 · 64 pages · 1 h
    • 5. Harold's Circus1959 · 64 pages · 1 h
    • 6. A Picture for Harold’s Room1960 · ≈ 64 pages · 1 h
    • 7. Harold's ABC Board Book1963 · ≈ 64 pages · 1 h
  2. The end of the series
    November 7, 2026

We count 1.1 min per page, the pace of an average novel reader. Faster? Move the slider.

≈ next to a page count: a volume with no page count in our data is counted at this series’s average.

How this plan is calculated

The plan comes from the pages and ratings of each volume: we split the series into stages of about three weeks’ reading, size each break to the stage before it, and read the chance of finishing from how many readers rate the last volume compared with the first. How we work out the plan →

Every volume in order

Read: 0 of 6
  1. Harold and the Purple Crayon
    Harold and the Purple Crayon1955 · 148 ratingsStart here
    8.28.2 / 10
  2. Harold's Fairy Tale
    Harold's Fairy Tale1956 · Not ranked yetBuy
    –Not ranked yet
  3. Harold's Trip to the Sky
    Harold's Trip to the Sky1957 · Not ranked yetBuy
    –Not ranked yet
  4. Harold's Circus
    Harold's Circus1959 · Not ranked yetBuy
    –Not ranked yet
  5. A Picture for Harold’s Room
    A Picture for Harold’s Room1960 · Not ranked yetBuy
    –Not ranked yet
  6. Harold's ABC Board Book
    Harold's ABC Board Book1963 · Not ranked yetBuy
    –Not ranked yet

Order checked by hand · Order and years: Wikidata (CC0). Spotted an error? Tell us. · Data updated October 29, 2026