Chidren’s author Maurice Sendak passed away this morning at the age of 83. Sendak wrote more than a dozen books and illustrated more than one hundred, but he is most remembered for his book, Where the Wild Things Are (1963), which is published in many languages around the world.
Like many others, I discovered the book as a kid and fell in love with it instantly. I remember it as one of the first books I picked out myself when I was attracted to the fascinating illustration on the cover. I liked that the “monsters” were both scary and cuddly at the same time. I eventually figured out that there was something unusual in the 10-sentence story too. In its simplicity and sparse use of words, it raised questions for me that I could not articulate and left me with some questions I still do not know the answer to today. At the time, I remember asking my mom, “Why was his food still hot?” and receiving an unsatisfying answer. The book somehow captures a complex aspect of childhood that adults cannot quite interpret. So I won’t do that here (although Sendak once described how he had to fight with his publisher to keep the word “hot” because his publisher wanted to change it to “warm”).
Spike Jonze understood the complexity of the book when he made his 2009 film version of Where the Wild Things Are, which on Rotten Tomatoes has a 73% rating from critics and a disappointing 59% rating from audience members. Some noted that the movie was more for adults than children, and the movie did a good job of taking a book that takes a few minutes to read and turning it into a feature length film. It is not the same as the book, but for those who grew up with the book, it made a good effort at recapturing that initial bewilderment from encountering the book as a child. As Nick Deigman explains on Fan the Fire, the movie is “a beautiful and languid testament to the importance of remembering how powerful our childhoods really were.”
That complexity in the film came directly from Sendak’s work. Today, the Washington Post explains that Sendak “transformed children’s literature from a gentle playscape into a medium to address the psychological intensity of growing up.” The dark tones of reality appeared in Sendak’s children’s books because he saw that side of life as a sickly and home-bound child who had relatives die in the Holocaust. He grew up in Brooklyn where his family kept him indoors much of the time because he suffered from bouts of measles, pneumonia and scarlet fever. He became fascinated with things like the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, which he later used as an inspiration for his book Outside Over There. Sendak based the Where the Wild Things monsters on his immigrant relatives who would visit when he was a child. They spoke a different language while engaging the children affectionately in ways that were terrifying to the children.
In an interview with Bill Moyers, Maurice Sendak explained that he originally conceived of Where the Wild Things as “Where the Wild Horses Are” until he discovered he could not draw horses. When asked why he wrote children’s books, he responds, “I don’t know.” I don’t either, but I’m glad he did. I am also glad he could not draw horses. In this interview from Tell Them Anything You Want: A Portrait of Maurice Sendak, a documentary by Spike Jonze and Lance Bangs, Sendak talks about death and looks back on his work. RIP.
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