I’m not usually a self-help book lover, but this one has such a clever conceit, it was hard to resist loving it. Ross Ellenhorn analyzes the children’s classic, ‘Harold and the Purple Crayon,’ to show how Harold uses the tools at hand to create a full life for himself. Harold starts life with nothing but his drawing tool, creates a moon to “hold” him, a road and a boat to travel with, animals to share a picnic with, and ends up his own bed. Ellenhorn uses these development, with a liberal dose of modernist thinkers, to create mini-lessons about how we can use human creativity and ingenuity to construct rich, fearless lives for ourselves and others. I’ll be thinking about Harold and his teachings for a long time.