Maurice Sendak - (1928 - )

His Life: Childhood

To pass the time, Maurice drew pictures and read comic books. His favorite was Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse. When he was well enough, he and his parents attended the local movie houses. Occasionally his older sister would take him to Manhattan to see movies at the Roxy or Radio City Music Hall. Films of the 1930s, including the Busby Berkeley musicals and Laurel and Hardy comedies, had a profound influence on some of his illustrations

Maurice Sendak loved to have his father read aloud to him at night before bedtime. He didn't like school much and wasn't good at sports, but he loved to read and often asked his sister to get him books from the library. In an interview on his favorite books as a child, he had many favorites. His sister gave him his first book, Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper. He loved that book and still has it today. Other favorites were Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses.

As a young adult, he liked great adventure stories by authors such as Herman Melville and his books, Typee and Moby Dick. Another favorite was Bret Harte's short story, "The Luck of Roaring Camp (3)". He began his work as an illustrator while he was still in high school. He helped in drawing the pictures from the comic strip, Mutt and Jeff into comic books. He went to art school at the Art Students' League to continue his education. He co-authored his very first published book, Atomics for the Millions that was published in 1947. He was just nineteen years old!

The summer of 1946 to the summer of 1948 were the happiest two years in Maurice's young life. He worked in the warehouse of a Manhattan window-display company called Timely Service and lived away from home for the first time. Sendak met the kinds of people he had not known in Brooklyn-real artists, who considered their work for Timely Service just a job that allowed them to paint seriously at night.

After leaving his first full time job in 1948, Maurice and his brother Jack created models for six wooden mechanical toys in the style of German eighteenth-century lever-operated toys. They were designed to portray parts in nursery rhymes and fairy tales. Jack engineered the toys, and Maurice did the painting and carving. Natalie sewed the costumes. The brothers took the models to the F.A.O. Schwartz toy store, where the prototypes were admired but considered too expensive to produce. Richard Nell, the window-display director, was impressed withMaurice's talent and hired him as an assistant in the window display department. This enabled him to earn a living in the daytime and attend the Art Student's League at night. He took classes in oil painting, life drawing, and composition. He also spent time in the children's book department studying the great nineteenth-century illustrators.

Illustrated First Book

The years between 1951 and 1962 are considered by Maurice Sendak to be his apprenticeship. He illustrated as many books as he could and learned to be flexible and adapt his drawings to the style of the text. "I was going to learn how to draw in a variety of styles. I think my books are identifiable, but they all look different because illustrators are secondary to the text. If you insist on being primary to the text, then you are considered a bad illustrator."

Where the Wild Things Are

Just as Maurice's life appeared to finally be on track, disaster struck. In 1967, he learned that his mother had developed cancer, he suffered a major coronary attack, and his beloved dog Jenny died. He moved to Ridgefields, Connecticut, in 1972. There he worked ten-hour days on other authors' books as well as his own. Outside Over There, which he considers one of his more significant books, was written during this period.

Opera Beckoned

Maurice also designed sets for ballets, most notably "The Nutcracker", which he rewrote to suit his own vision of the story, and his own Where the Wild Things Are. A shy man who dislikes crowds, Sendak rarely attends the opera or ballet himself.

Throughout the past fifty years, Maurice Sendak has been one of the most consistently inventive and challenging voices in children’s literature. His books and productions are among the best-loved imaginative works of their time.

Like the Grimm brothers before him, Sendak has created a body of work both entertaining and educational, which will continue to be popular for generations.

His Writings:

What is a hole?
A hole is when you step in it
you go down

A hole is
for a mouse
to live in.

And, of course,a hole is to dig.

This is the funniest book of definitions you'll ever read!

Published in 1956, Kenny's Window follows the adventures of a boy living out his fantasies from the confines of his bedroom. His window provides a magic portal as he strives to answer seven questions posed to him in a dream.

Kenny dreams of a fabulous land where he would like to live always, and in his search for it discovers many things about himself and about growing up. ‘An unusual, imaginative story . . . in which reality blends with make-believe.'

A little boy is tired of his mother not answering his questions, so he makes an attempt to find Very Far Away. On his journey, he meets a horse who wants to dream more, a bird who misses his home where people are refined and a cat who wants to sing without interruptions. Really a cute, fun book.

Each month gets its own rhythmic poem and accompanying illustration. These are fairly simple pen and ink drawings with the occasional splash of blue (in varying shades), yellow, gray, and green. You may wonder how an author could ever hope to come up with twelve highly original soup-related poems. I mean, honestly, how much is there to say about even the fanciest soup, let alone chicken soup with rice? Quite a lot, as it happens. In the cold winter months soup is supped while sliding on ice, while celebrating the birthday of a snowman, and in a gusty gale as a whale. In the spring there's robin's nest soup, soup to cure drooping roses, and soup stolen by jealous March winds.

There was a sign on Rosie's door that said, "If you want to know a secret, knock three times." Kathy, Rosie's good friend, knocked three times and learned the secret-that Rosie was no longer Rosie, but Alinda, the lovely lady singer.

Adventures with Alinda were fun for Kathy and Sal and Pudgy and Dolly. Even Lenny, who occasionally didn't believe in Alinda, was delighted by the Fourth of July celebration that Alinda, with the help of the Magic Man, held. At the end of the celebration, Alinda was gone forever, and Rosie had returned, but she soon found something else nice to be.

This is a great book with one to ten -- unlike many, its forwards and backwards. The illustrations are classic Sendak -- a kooky little kid, and crazy animal friends. Nine arrive, and to get back to his solitude, Johnny counts backwards to make them leave. There are a lot of cute counting books out there, but this one has a twist no one else has picked up. The story line is nonsensical enough to hold interest for a long time.

Those alligators really do get around! Whether they're entertaining elephants, making macaroni, having headaches, or throwing tantrums, the rascally reptiles are never napping! Maurice Sendak's alphabet book will have young "readers" reciting their ABC's in no time. The three-color illustrations endear these quite quarrelsome critters to readers' hearts. Mom, Dad, and Junior are brimming with personality; the collective images create a complete picture of the nutty--yet remarkably familiar--household. Somehow, these likable lizards manage to capture the foibles and peculiarities of human nature better than many bipeds ever could. Yet beneath their very vain and sometimes shockingly spoiled surface, the friendly fanged creatures have a charm that no one can resist.

Oh, that naughty boy! No matter what his parents say, Pierre just doesn't care. Even when a hungry lion comes to pay a call, Pierre won't snap out of his ennui. Every child has one of these days sometimes. Mix in a stubborn nature, a touch of apathy, and a haughty pout, and it can turn noxious.

Parents may cajole, scold, bribe, threaten--all to no avail. When this mood strikes, the Pierres of the world will not budge, even for the carnivorous king of beasts. By the end of the lilting, witty story, most children will take the moral (Care!) to heart. Pierre's downward-turned eyebrows, his parents' pleading faces, and the lion's almost sympathetic demeanor as he explains that he will soon eat Pierre, make the package perfect.

By the early 1960s, Sendak had already gained a following as one of the more expressive and interesting illustrators in the business. In 1963, this book brought him international acclaim and a place among the world's great illustrators. For this project, Sendak worked as both the illustrator and the writer.

It is the story of a young boy named Max, who is sent to his room only to find his imagination has created a new world there, populated by wild geographies and monsters of all kinds. Initially, its graphic portrayal of the toothy wild things concerned parents, but before long it was a favorite among children everywhere, having been translated into fifteen languages and selling more than two million copies.

This book happens to be my favorite Sendak. Taking two rather obscure Mother Goose rhymes, Sendak creates compelling stories purely through his illustrations. One could read the book entirely through his drawings, without making any reference to the texts. A very imaginative book, particularly as the child who is reading it has to make an effort to look at the pictures to follow the narrative.

Higglety-pigglety pop! The dog has eaten the mop!
The pig's in a hurry
The cat's in a flurry
Higglety-pigglety pop!

This dreamy, slightly dark story, illustrated in Sendak's renowned pen-and-ink style, tells of a gluttonous dog's transformation from someone who cares only about her next salami sandwich to one who would risk her life for a weaker being (while still wondering where that next sandwich is coming from).

The story is about a little boy whose dream takes him to the Night Kitchen where the bakers are making the morning cake. The bakers have a glitch and Mickey is able to come to the rescue. And of course, Mickey is the reason why there are delicious things to eat in the morning (hooray for Mickey).

The whole idea of bakers working in the wee morning hours creating yummy things for our breakfasts is an intriguing idea and one that isn't talked about very often. However, those croissants, bagels, and delicious pastries are made in "Night Kitchens" the world over. This book, besides being entertaining, is actually educational.

From a Mom, "I just listened to it for the first time in probably over 25 years and was amazed at how good the songs were. The lyrics, of course, are fabulous, and the music is catchy, but not at all annoying like some children's music can be. Both of my kids (age 4 and 2) were dancing around the room on the first listen and asked me to play it again when it was over. I have a feeling it will be in heavy rotation for a while by their request."

When a puppy is abandoned on their doorstep, a boy and girl learn to survive the rigors of "parenthood" with the help of a cloaked canine stranger. Love, patience and understanding are the solutions in Sendak's cautionary comic book tale

This is a delightful little counting book for any true fan of Where the Wild Things Are. The book takes the Wild Things characters, except Max, and shows their mischievous side. Sendak uses simple rhyming text and familiar illustrations. Seven Little Monsters is a great book to use in the preschool classroom, especially around Halloween.

The plot is a classic one. Big sister Ida cares for her little baby sister while her father is a way and her mother pines in the arbor. When goblins steal the baby for their bride, it's up to Ida to go outside over there and get her sister back.

Sendak sets this first rhyme in New York, where homeless children are watched over by an increasingly agitated moon and where two wicked rats build a house of cards. In the second part, Jack and Guy, who have earlier ignored the waif's pleas for help, follow after: There's much more going on in the extraordinary art, including allusions visual (Trump Tower, a Cheshire cat moon that maternally enfolds the kittens) and verbal (in dialogue balloons and newsprint that also serves as shelter). Lucky children have seen homelessness, and worse, only on TV; the unlucky have lived it. In this beautiful, passionately concerned book, Sendak creates visual poetry, rich in symbolism, that goes to the heart of such matters better than any earnest description. Once again, he explores new ground and offers a masterpiece.

Coming October 16th 2009: Where the Wild Things Are: The movie is an adaptation of the classic Maurice Sendak picture book and combines live action and CGI animation. The puppets were created by Jim Henson's Creature Workshop. Produced by Tom Hanks and directed by Spike Jonze. Starring Catherine Keener as the mother and James Gandolfini, Angus Sampson, Benicio Del Toro and Forest Whitaker as the Wild Things. The adventure film uses a unique process to bring the story to life, incorporating the most dynamic elements of voice performance, live-action puppetry and computer animation.