Rest In Peace, Maurice Sendak

our miss geeta with a nice piece:

http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/05/maurice-sendak-rip/

this for all time:

“Too many parents and too many writers of children’s books don’t respect the fact that kids know a great deal and suffer a great deal,” Sendak told The New Yorker’s Hentoff. “It’s not that I don’t see the naturalistic beauty of a child. I’m very aware of that beauty, and I could draw it…. But I am trying to draw the way children feel — or rather, the way I imagine they feel. It’s the way I know I felt as a child.”

RIP, Big Mo.

Loved Sendak, his books and illustrations for others. The Animal Family by Randal Jarrel was a favorite, and his drawings were a really great match in tone. This picture from Zlateh the Goat and Other Stories was one of the most compelling and scary pictures:

http://forward.com/workspace/assets/images/articles/sendak2-092409.jpg

It's the combination of menace and jollity that makes the Devil scary! He really nails it. And how much his face stands out compared to the subtle relief of his body, hooves, wings. Why the gnomes? Why the menorah & c? I don't remember a thing about that book except this picture, it's burned in me forever.

He's my favorite kind of curmudgeon, and an amazing craftsman.

I just read a book about Caldecott-winning artists and the chapter on how he made Where the Wild Things Are was incredible. He spent seven years refining it. It started out as Where The Wild Horses Are. He'd put it down for months, pick it up again, rework it, over and over. Dig this dummy book he made during the process, it's just one inch tall and looks like the inside of a zeotrope:

http://28.media.tumblr.com/l9tDR5PyCnegx1em3qes9CCKo1_500.png

damn, rip

Both of my kids went through phases of loving "In the Night Kitchen," far more than they ever did "Wild Things." I think it's because it's just so batshit insane they didn't know what to make of it.

^ went through this phase. also hilarious due to wang.

Where The Child Wangs Are.

RIP!

in the wang kitchen

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj242/donaldparsley/wangkitchensm.jpg

<3

that interviews overview on npr this afternoon was soo good!

i kinda think 'outside over there' is his masterpiece, and not just because i remember my first encounter with it in second grade with such queasy vividness that for years i thought i'd dreamed it, since no actual kids' book like that could possibly exist.

it may be. that or wild things.

i think what really puts across that devil picture is the way he's got one hand in his pocket. who else would think to draw him like that?

here's a piece i wrote about maurice sendak for wired:

http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/05/maurice-sendak-rip/

great interview: http://believermag.com/issues/201211/?read=interview_sendak

[The phone rings. It is NPR letting Sendak know that a recent interview with him has run and is generating a lot of responses. He praises Terry Gross, the interviewer.]

MS: The only thing she said wrong was that her favorite interviews had been me and that stupid fucking writer. Salman Rushdie, that flaccid fuckhead. He reviewed me on a full page in the New York Times, my book Dear Mili. He hated it. He is detestable. I called up the Ayatollah, nobody knows that. What else shall we talk about?

gotta say i agree with his comments on Roald Dahl.