

The Purple Crayon - 10char
http://clayallsopp.com/posts/harold-and-the-purple-crayon/

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softbuilder
I read this when I was 4. It's a simple but amazing little book. I think it
contributed to my active imagination as a child. The only downside is that I
drew on the walls a little bit. :)

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protomyth
Buy the book and the buy butcher paper for the walls of the kids room - works
fairly well

laminated white cardboard and dry erase markers for older children

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jasonfried
This was my favorite book growing up.

I can't trace it exactly, but I feel like it gave me permission to create my
own version of a lot of things that we usually just have to live with.

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gruseom
That purple crayon sounds ultra cool. I don't remember having read that book,
but the OP reminded me of one called _Mr Pine's Purple House_ that made a big
impact on me when I was learning to read. Maybe there's a secret purple
fraternity of children's books.

Mr Pine lives on a street where all the houses are white with white picket
fences, and he can never find his own damn house. (The book didn't say
"damn".) One day he decides to bust loose and paint it purple. I remembered
this as a crypto-anarchistic 60s radical "do your own thing" kind of thing. It
stuck in my mind as a subversive influence.

Years later I discovered that a fan group devoted to this book had formed on
the internet and persuaded the now 80-year old author to republish it. I
mentioned this randomly one day and months later my son cleverly gave it to me
as a birthday present. The whole thing turned out to be far tamer than I
remembered! Either it was extremely gentle crypto-anarchism or I totally read
that into it. I'm not sure which explanation is better.

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dublinben
I loved this book as a kid. I'm sure it did something to inspire my wild
imagination.

Unfortunately, I see technology as less inviting to young tinkering as it once
was. The command line is obscured away in modern operating systems. Mobile
devices are locked down, and impossible to create new programs with anyway. If
this trend continues, I fear the programming will be less accessible to young
people than ever before. In the UK, the number of students studying computer
science is already dramatically down from its peak.

<http://royalsociety.org/news/ict-computer-science/>

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seanmcdirmid
And yet, we have increasingly better robotic toolkits, Minecraft and
LittleBigPlanet as popular video games, 3D printers, and so on. Its not all
negative.

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jonathanjaeger
Best children's book ever! Probably the book title I've randomly thrown into
conversation the most in my adult life.. I'm not sure why. Maybe the
distinctive title and character.

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RexRollman
I never read this book as a child but I have read it many times with my nine
year old daughter and I really like it. It is wonderfully imaginative and the
artwork is quite nice.

I also want to mention that Crockett Johnson also did a comic strip called
Barnaby, which Fantagraphics will be republishing in May.

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rishimoko
I'm guessing Clay is in his 20's? If so, I'm approaching 52 years old and I
loved this book equally as much in 1966 or thereabouts. If you're reading
this, you made my day by reminding me of it.

> "Coding democratized how we can solve our own problems, regardless of age."

Well said. I'd add that very few old men are innovators, especially when it
comes to CS or the like.

What I'm glad to see is more folks in this generation learning how to create
their own channels, sell what they make and not depend on larger entities for
their survival.

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dfc
_It's the story of a boy named Harold and his namesake crayon_

I don't remember the story by heart but I don't think the crayon was named
Harold. But I never obsessed over the story so I could be wrong. Was the
crayon named harold?

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nsmartt
This seems to be a mistake. I'm pretty sure the namesake mentioned is in
reference to the book title, not the boy's name.

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dfc
Correct, it is an incorrect use of the word namesake. But I'm not sure what
the author's intention was when he used it.

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pnewman2
I read this book as a child and now I read it to my young son. Creativity is
certainly timeless.

