Thank You, Maurice.

Lines and Colors post

Onion AV Club post

Tough Pigs post

Terrible Yellow Eyes

In the Dumps

And of course,

Maurice Sendak Being Awesome

Four Weirder Nutcracker Films

"Where The Wild Things Are" Review

Master's Essay Part One

Master's Essay Part Two

We'll all miss you like crazy, Maurice.  Hopefully, you're upsetting and confusing concerned parent angels and blowing the minds of weird kid angels now.

Edit: Had to share Ape Lad's lovely tribute too:

Where the Wild Silly Old Bears Are

Well, here (via the wonderful /Film as usual) is the new trailer for Disney's "Winnie the Pooh", arriving in theaters this coming summer:



Now, this is an excellent trailer (though the editing is a little wonky at times). It has so far gained lots and lots of positive comments, which bodes well for Disney animation. And while the film is being released in a rather crowded market, it could be considered good counter-programing (unless A. A. Milne ever wrote an extended scene I am unaware of where every third character is violently killed).

That said, for some reason, this trailer felt... familiar...

EDIT: Well, that didn't take long now, did it?



OK, turns out that this trailer remix is kinda old, but even funnier now. And just for fun (and also because this post is a bit on the short side), here's one of my favorite trailer remixes ever: Christopher Nolan's "Dumb and Dumber" (it works out better than you'd expect because you tend to forget how damn dark "D&D" could get):



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Art of the Day! More goopy plein air goodness!

"This One's for the Weird Kids / the Weird Kids of the World" - Thoughts on "Where the Wild Things Are"

I really liked it. Hell, I wanted to give everyone in the movie a hug.

Mind you, I did part of my thesis on Maurice Sendak, so I kind of "get" him. And in saying that, I can see why some people wouldn't like this. It IS weird. It looks -and, more importantly, it feels- absolutely like a Maurice Sendak illustration in motion. More to the point, and this might be what turned so many people off this movie, it doesn't play by the unspoken rules of what a kid's movie is "supposed" to be these days.

The characters really get hurt and angry and sad. The little boy acts like an actual little boy and throws tantrums when his sister ignores him, bawls openly when his face is accidentally planted in the snow (there are few things worse), and plays under his mom's desk and tells her strange kid-logic stories off the top of his head. He does not act like a snarky miniature adult. He grows and changes but there's no inevitable "and then we all learned a lesson" moment.

It puts a lot of naked emotion on the screen and lets you deal with it on your own. There's no hand-holding and no babysitting. "Where the Wild Things Are" actually reminds me less of any current movie made for children and more of the time, not too long ago, when children's entertainment could be really weird and offbeat, and could haunt you with questions and ideas and images you suspected, as a child, that even mom and dad couldn't answer or explain for you.

Kids need more movies like this. I watched "Don't You Forget About Me", the documentary about John Hughes and his films, shortly after I watched this and the thing that hit me was something that kept coming up with all the teenagers interviewed for the film: they could not relate in any way at all to what modern-day Hollywood thinks young people are like. The only characters that reminded them of themselves were the ones in Hughes' twenty-something year old movies. Hughes had a knack for writing young people who thought and felt the way adults usually like to pretend they don't really act and feel. That's a rare gift, but I'd say Spike Jones inherits it here.

And, yes, it is a children's film. One that had my entire family enthralled. I say do what our parents did in the '80s: sit your kids in front of it and leave them be. We made out okay, right?

It is freakin' miraculous that this movie exists in the form it does. I haven't even mentioned that it's also absolutely gorgeous and is the one movie out of the many many films I've seen recently that really stuck with me (well, except for the two I'll review over the rest of this week). I could go on, but a lot of my feelings are echoed here.

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Sketch of the Day!

Here's a Gryphon:

Let's continue reading my essay on Maurice Sendak!

Ow, my thumbnails. And pretty much everything else. I may have gone a little overboard gardening yesterday.
Anyway, the second half of this essay (here's Part One) is made up mainly of book reviews (for the record, I was required to consider whether each book was appropriate for a school classroom) and a brief summary of the author's biography and Bibliography:

The Sign on Rosie's Door, Written and Illustrated By Maurice Sendak
As in the Picture Book Analysis Project*, I will be considering these eight books in chronological order. In this way, I will be able to review Maurice Sendak's growth as a writer and artist.
The Sign on Rosie's Door is the thirty-ninth book illustrated by Maurice Sendak. However, it is only the third book that Sendak himself wrote, based upon his own original ideas. The story is about an imaginative little girl whom Sendak has since identified as an amalgamation of several children he'd known in real life in his Brooklyn neighborhood. Like her real-life counterparts, Rosie is a born actress with a wildly creative imagination. She has a talent for bringing other children into her fantasy role-playing and refuses to break character for anyone, even if the play is interrupted.
This is a book that celebrates a child's ability to use her imagination. Rosie is the typical Maurice Sendak child-hero. She's spunky, artistic, and not always appreciated by adults and less imaginative children. Her story is both hilarious and achingly ironic (the ending of the first chapter is a great combination of humor and pathos).
The illustrations are charming and energetic. We feel like we know these children, as their faces and gestures convey a great deal of personality. Sendak's style of illustration in this book tends to be less concerned with realistic detail and more with animation and characterization.
Sendak's books are almost always better for older children, but Rosie is appropriate for all ages. Overall the book feels like an episode of an animated series (one can easily imagine the further adventures of Rosie and her friends). As it happens, Rosie and the four little books of the Nutshell Library formed the framework for the animated feature "Really Rosie", one of Sendak's disappointingly rare excursions into film.
* - I had to review a series of picture books by one illustrator in chronological order. I'll have that up sometime later, possibly December. (You'll see why when you see who that illustrator is.)

Where the Wild Things Are, Written and Illustrated By Maurice Sendak
Here is Maurice Sendak's signature book. Wild Things caused a sensation when it was first released in 1963. It would go on to win the Caldecott Medal, and it is today regarded as a classic of its genera.
However, it is also a book that tends to make adults anxious. Are the titular monsters too scary? For some children, especially very young ones, they could be. You might not want to read this as a bedtime story to a preschooler. However, it's wonderful as an energetic read-aloud for second-graders and other children around the age of the hero, Max. You'll notice, in the book, how Max finds the Wild Things more comical than menacing.
In fact, Sendak has recently explained that his inspirations for the Wild Things are none other than his older relatives. More specifically, they are caricatures of how he saw them as a little kid.
The pen and ink and watercolor artwork in Wild Things is evocative, and once again brings to mind a particularly lavish animated film. Much has been said about Sendak's creative use of borders and of blank, white space. As Max travels to and from the world of the Wild Things, the images grow until they fill the page, and then shrink back down again.
It took Maurice Sendak quite some time working on the story of Wild Things before he finally decided he'd got it right. The language of the text is understated and adds to the dreamlike quality of the images. There is great humor in the story and a sense of fun, and above all Sendak respects the child's ability to use his imagination.

Hector Protector and As I Went Over the Water, Written and Illustrated By Maurice Sendak
This book contains two obscure Mother Goose rhymes illustrated by Maurice Sendak. He hasn’t changed the rhymes at all, but he has expanded considerably on their plot. The illustrations are once again pen and ink and watercolor and very animated.
Hector Protector, in Sendak’s version, is a little boy who’d probably rather be outside playing but instead has to get dressed up nicely and deliver a cake to the Queen. He protests this unspeakable injustice by screaming “no!” repeatedly, and drop-kicking the cake the moment he’s outside. After encounters with a lion (who may have wandered in from the island of the Wild Things), and a boa constrictor, our hero makes a truly memorable appearance in the Queen’s court.
In the second story, “As I Went Over the Water”, another little boy sails about in a ship that is swallowed by a rather silly looking sea monster. The boy heads to an island where he meets two accusatory birds. After taming them in a fit of violence, the boy heads back into his boat (recently regurgitated by the monster) and makes the repentant animals his skippers.
It’s obvious that Sendak had much more fun expanding on “Hector” than “Water”. The first story is so hilarious and memorable that the second pales in comparison. It’s hard to say how this book could be used in a classroom, but it’s fine for older students to read by themselves.

Higglety Pigglety POP! Or There Must Be More to Life…, Written and Illustrated By Maurice Sendak
1967 was a very hard year for Maurice Sendak. His mother had fallen very ill. While on a trip to England, he had a severe coronary attack. After recovering from his near-death experience, Sendak returned home to find that his beloved terrier, Jennie, was suffering from cancer. Higglety Pigglety POP! was published less than a month after Jennie died.
This book is a love letter to a dear, lost friend. It is illustrated in loving, intimate pen and ink drawings that simulate the look of Dürer engravings. Many of these drawings are based directly off of photographs Sendak had taken of Jennie.
The story is an engaging modern fairy tale. Our furry heroine heads off on a voyage to find her destiny, meeting a series of unusual characters along the way. (They are also very patient characters. For example, the first living thing Jennie converses with is a potted geranium who accepts Jennie's appetite, her most prominent personality trait. The plant does not complain as the dog rapidly eats off all its leaves.) Jennie lives happily ever after, safe and loved in a mysterious castle that no one can quite remember the directions to.
This book can be enjoyed by children of any age. However, it is perhaps most profoundly moving for older readers. It should be noted that the book is actually quite humorous in tone and its underlying themes of loss and remembrance are kept very subtle. Perhaps there aren’t many young children who could understand the subtexts. But you never know with some children, so I wouldn't use this in a classroom if I knew that a student had just recently lost a pet.

In the Night Kitchen, Written and Illustrated By Maurice Sendak
Bizarre, unique, and ultimately unforgettable, this book is one of Sendak's personal favorites. Night Kitchen contains a wealth of pop-culture cross-references, and it is a celebration of everything Sendak remembered well from his childhood.
The hero, Mickey (named after Mickey Mouse of course) has a very strange dreamlike adventure in a realm where three fat, happy bakers bake cakes all night long. The story is inarguably weird. It works, however, because the text is bold and brassy and has the feel of an old nonsense-rhyme.
The artwork is colorful and energetic. It is straight out of a Windsor McKay comic illustration, and is packed with wonderful details and inside jokes.
With all that said, this book might not be for all people.
All of Sendak's books have a dreamlike quality, but this one actually takes place within a characters' dream. That means that the story doesn't use the same logic that more normal stories do. This could be a little much for the classroom. Not to mention the fact that Mickey is unabashedly naked for most of the story. It's hard to say how In the Night Kitchen would fit in a classroom, but it is worth reading. The book is a hallmark of Sendak's career and it was made into a delightful animated short film by surrealist director Gene Deitch.

Some Swell Pup! Or Are You Sure You Want a Dog? Written By Maurice Sendak and Matthew Margolis and Illustrated By Maurice Sendak
Two little children, a boy and a girl, sit in the windows of their playhouse longing for a puppy. A mysterious stranger (who happens to be an anthropomorphic dog) overhears them and drops an adorable puppy on their doorstep. The children are overjoyed by their good fortune.
Their new puppy proceeds to urinate on their carpet.
The puppy then goes on to maul the upholstery, defecate on the floor, and generally trash the playhouse. So Maurice Sendak, with the help of Matthew Margolis, the director of the National Institute of Dog Training, has created an unflinching, warts-and-all guidebook about the reality of raising a puppy. His use of comic book style art and formatting adds much-needed humor to the mayhem. He makes it very clear that pets can be a handful sometimes. Yes, it is funny when the puppy pees on the floor... but guess who’s going to have to clean up afterwards? This is a book that faces issues up front that very few children’s books are willing to acknowledge.
But Sendak has faith in the fact that having a pet is well worth the effort. The love is rewarding. In the end, the children accept their new responsibilities. This book is an excellent resource for parents who want to discuss with their children exactly what to expect after bringing a pet into the house.

Outside, Over There, Written and Illustrated By Maurice Sendak
This is perhaps the best of Maurice Sendak's more recent books. It is an eerie modern-day fairy tale based upon a wide variety of elements that had been floating around in its creator's unconsciousness for decades.
Ida, the greatest Sendak heroine since Rosie, takes her eyes off her baby sister for a split second, and in that second the baby is snatched away by mysterious, cloaked goblins. Furious, Ida immediately sets out into the weird demon playground of the title in search of her sister. She finds an ingenious way to defeat the creatures and returns with baby… and her mother and father have no idea of her dangerous adventure.
Visually, this book contains the most astonishing artwork Sendak has ever produced. The colors are intense and reflect Ida's changing moods. The bizarre other world of the goblins is as strange and scary as a horror movie. In fact the book is without question too frightening for small children (and unnerving for adults as well; the eyes on the ice doll the goblins replace the baby with will haunt you for days).
The story is exciting and the writing is offbeat and poetic. It follows the strange logic of folktales, and Sendak isn't shy about putting his characters through serious danger. Sendak has since hinted that each of the characters and events in the story has a real-life counterpart from his childhood in the 1930's. Ida could be Sendak's older sister. Baby could be the kidnapped Lindbergh baby, and the entire story could have been sparked by Sendak's horror about the case and its outcome. The goblins might be caricatures of the Dionne quintuplets, there is a cameo from Mozart, and the ironic ending is clearly inspired by "the Wizard of OZ". While not as familiar as Where the Wild Things Are, Outside, Over There is a masterpiece.

We Are All in the Dumps With Jack and Guy, Written and Illustrated By Maurice Sendak
This is easily the strangest Maurice Sendak book of all and that's saying a lot.
Dumps is fairly recent, published in 1993, and is one of the last of Sendak's books to receive significant attention in the mainstream press. It is about as far removed from Sendak's previous nursery rhyme books (such as Hector Protector) as you could possibly get. Instead of happy and funny, this is rather downbeat and more than a little disturbing.
Here's the story. In the first rhyme, a group of orphans live by themselves in a little shack. They are tormented by nasty, scary-looking ratlike monsters who kidnap a huge litter of kittens and a tiny baby. The story continues into the next rhyme, where two of the orphans, Jack and Guy, rescue the baby and the kittens with the help of the ever-present and increasingly angry moon.
This book is bleak, even though the story ends happily. All of the environments are dirty alleyways, smog-belching factories, and overgrown ditches. The bad monsters are terrifying and the helpful moon isn't any less scary. I like Sendak, but this book was a bit too much.
It isn't hard to see why this book gained notoriety. It pushes a lot of thematic buttons. It is very difficult to decide who out there would enjoy a book like this and I haven't the slightest idea what you could do with it with children in a classroom. Nonetheless, it is so unusual that it is worth it for adults to read.

Biography
* - Born Maurice Bernard Sendak on June 10, 1928 in Brooklyn, New York;
* - Parents were first generation Polish immigrants;
* - Sendak never enjoyed good health as a child. He entertained himself by making up stories with his older brother and drawing pictures to go along with them;
* - Took inspiration from the daily life of the city around him;
* - Sendak’s art is most profoundly influenced by Disney films and Windsor McKay comics;
* - Sendak’s books never speak down to children. He celebrates childrens’ use of imagination and love of fantasy;

Books and Films

Books Maurice Sendak wrote and illustrated himself (selected):
Kenny’s Window, Harper, 1956
Very Far Away, Harper, 1957
The Sign on Rosie’s Door, Harper, 1960
The Nutshell Library, Harper, 1962
Where the Wild Things Are, Harper, 1963
Hector Protector and As I Went Over the Water, Harper, 1965
Higglety, Pigglety, POP! -or- There Must Be More to Life, Harper, 1967
In the Night Kitchen, Harper, 1970
Some Swell Pup -or- Are You Sure You Want a Dog? Farrar, Straus, 1976
Seven Little Monsters, Harper, 1977
Outside, Over There, Harper, 1981
We Are All in the Dumps With Jack and Guy, HarperCollins, 1993

Selected books Maurice Sendak illustrated for other authors (starred writers are frequent collaborators, so to speak):
* Ruth Krauss, A Hole is To Dig, Harper, 1952
* Else Minarik, Little Bear, Harper, 1957
Hans Christian Anderson, Seven Tales, Harper, 1959
* Randall Jarrell, The Bat-Poet, Collier, 1964
Isaac Bashevis Singer, Zlateh the Goat and Other Stories, Harper, 1966
George Macdonald, The Golden Key, Harper, 1967 (currently published by Farrar, Straus)
Frank Stockton, The Griffin and the Minor Cannon, Collins, 1968
* the Brothers Grimm, The Juniper Tree and Other Tales from Grimm, Farrar, Straus, 1973
E.T.A. Hoffman, The Nutcracker, Crown, 1984

Filmography:
Maurice Sendak’s only director credit (so far) is the animated film, “Maurice Sendak’s *Really Rosie*”. However, a feature film was made of “the Nutcracker” with sets and costumes based upon his designs. Surrealistic animator Gene Deitch made a delightful short film adaptation of “In the Night Kitchen” which is well worth hunting for. It and “Rosie” have been released on home video by Weston Woods. Both Little Bear and Seven Little Monsters have been adapted into ongoing animated series.

Online Resources
Curiously, Maurice Sendak doesn’t appear to have his own official website. His publishers have very brief information to share. Here are their websites:
Harper Collins
Hyperion Books

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The main reason why I was moved to publish this online is because it seemed last week as though someone had cried out, "Let the 'Where The Wild Things Are' backlash begin!"
Listen, Maurice Sendak says he loves the hell out of the film*, and that's enough for me. And it turns out that the few people who have seen "Wild Things" and disliked it have also admitted a dislike for the thematically very similar "My Neighbor Totoro". Apparently, the slow and whimsy-heavy pacing of "Wild Things" is very Miyazakian.
They act like that's a bad thing in a movie for kids.
* - He very succinctly shares his opinion on an issue I brought up earlier: "The controversial content of the book hardly bothered anyone, but for some reason now that it's a movie everybody panics. WTF?"

Boston Comic-Con is a week from tomorrow! I'll be there, of course, at the Comic Artists Guild table, and as of right now I am scheduled for mid-day both Saturday and Sunday. Come by and pick up a promotional postcard!

And if you live in New York City, you can go see some at WizardWorld this weekend!

And I'm very glad that ToughPigs recently posted a blog about this television special which, as you'll see, was so strange I thought I dreamed it.

Let's read my master's school essay about Maurice Sendak!

Because "Where the Wild Things Are" made me think of it, of course, and because I was lucky enough to find it on the first backup CD I took out of the filing cabinet (trust me, this is very impressive.)
I don't think I mentioned this before, but I have my Master's Degree in Education, with a focus on children's media. Basically, this means you can trust me when I recommend a work of fiction directed at children. With your life.
Anyway, what you're about to read is one of the many essays that comprised my thesis project. (The thesis itself is about four inches thick.) I was assigned to write a biography on a significant figure in the world of children's fiction and Sendak turned out to be one of the most fascinating people in the field. Today, I'm posting the bibliography and biography, and the next post will have book reviews and whatever else didn't fit here.
Final draft originally "published" 5-1-2005.

Bibliography
Children’s Books Written and Illustrated by Maurice Sendak:
* Grimm, Wilhelm. (1988). Dear Mili (Ralph Manheim, Trans.). New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. (Original story written 1816).
* Kushner, Tony. (2003). Brundibar. New York: Michael di Capua Books.
* Sendak, Maurice. (1960). The Sign on Rosie’s Door. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers.
* Sendak, Maurice. (1963). Where the Wild Things Are. New York: Harper Collins Publishers.
* Sendak, Maurice. (1965). Hector Protector and As I Went Over the Water. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers.
* Sendak, Maurice. (1967). Higglety Pigglety POP! -or- There Must Be More to Life. New York: Harper Collins Publishers.
* Sendak, Maurice. (1970). In the Night Kitchen. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers.
* Sendak, Maurice and Margolis, Matthew. (1976). Some Swell Pup -or- Are You Sure You Want a Dog? New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
* Sendak, Maurice. (1981). Outside Over There. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers.
* Sendak, Maurice. (1993). We Are All In the Dumps With Jack and Guy. New York: Harper Collins Publishers.

Other Books
* Jones, J. Sydney. (2000). Sendak, Maurice Bernard. In Alan Hedblad (Managing Ed.), Something About the Author (Vol. 113) (160-169). Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group, Inc.
* Lanes, Selma G. (1980). The Art of Maurice Sendak. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc.
* Sendak, Maurice. (1970). Fantasy Sketches. Philadelphia, PA: The Meriden Gravure Company
* Sendak, Maurice. (1988). Caldecott and Co. Notes on Books & Pictures. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
* Zinsser, William (Ed.). (1998). Worlds of Childhood: the Art and Craft of Writing for Children. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co.

Articles and Films
* Maguire, Gregory. (2003). A Sendak Appreciation. The Horn Book Magazine, Vol. 79, 667-682.
* Marcus, Leonard S. (2003). Where the Wild Things Are. The Horn Book Magazine, Vol. 79, 703-706.
* Sutton, Roger. (2003). An Interview With Maurice Sendak. The Horn Book Magazine, Vol. 79, 687-699.
* Deitch, Gene (Writer/Director). (1987). In the Night Kitchen [Motion Picture]. Weston, CT: Weston Woods.
* Fleming, Victor (Director), Langely, Noel (Writer), & LeRoy, Mervyn (Producer). (1939). The Wizard of OZ [Motion Picture]. Hollywood, CA: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
* Luske, Hamilton & Sharpsteen, Ben (Directors), Battaglia, Aurelius (Writer), & Disney, Walter (Producer). (1940). Pinocchio [Motion Picture]. Hollywood, CA: Walt Disney Motion Pictures.
* Sendak, Maurice (Writer/Director), & Riss, Sheldon (Producer). (1976). Maurice Sendak’s *Really Rosie* [Motion Picture]. Los Angeles, CA: Wood Knapp Video.
* Schindel, Morton (Producer). (1985). Getting to Know Maurice Sendak [Motion Picture]. Weston, CT: Weston Woods.

"We'll Eat You Up, We Love You So" - The Worlds of Maurice Sendak
One of Maurice Sendak's earliest memories from his childhood was a cold February day in 1940; the day his older sister took him into town to see the Disney film, "Pinocchio". Although they arrived late, and missed the first twenty minutes, Sendak was enthralled. This movie was imaginative, scary, and poignant. And best of all it was smart enough to understand what life was really like from a child's point of view. It respected the fact that childhood is full of happiness and wonder, and that it is just as often frightening and upsetting. It immediately became one of Sendak's all-time favorite films.
When Sendak was a teenager, he decided to read the original Carlo Collodi novel, which inspired the Disney film. He was stunned by what he read.
Disney's Pinocchio is an innocent fool-hero; he runs into trouble without meaning to do so. But the original, printed page Pinocchio is a nasty little brat from the very beginning. Worse yet, he is told, over and over, that the only way to redeem himself is to fully obey all of the adults without question. The punishments given to Pinocchio when he refuses to obey are astonishingly cruel.
Maurice Sendak was appalled. Here was a story written by somebody who clearly didn't understand young children at all. Or else, the author hated children and thought they were malicious by their very nature. In either case, Collodi clearly believed that children needed to be frightened into behaving nicely all the time. (Sendak, 1988)
This was an important turning point in Sendak's career as a writer for children. He vowed that no matter what, he would respect his young audience on their own terms, and he would never, ever talk down to them. For this reason, Maurice Sendak is inarguably one of our generation's most important writers for children.
Maurice Bernard Sendak was born on June 10, 1928 in Brooklyn, New York. His parents were both immigrants, both from small Jewish neighborhoods outside Warsaw, who had come to America from Poland some time before World War I. Maurice was five years younger than his brother Jack and nine years younger than his sister, Natalie.
As a child, Maurice Sendak never enjoyed good health. When he was very young, he fell ill from both measles and double pneumonia, and was bedridden for thirteen weeks. His parents worried ceaselessly about Maurice's chances for survival… within the boy's earshot.
It seems they took for granted that little Maurice wouldn't understand what was going on, but they were very wrong. "…My parents were indiscreet enough to bewail my sickliness and carry on about how long I'd be around. I learned early on that it was a chancy business, being alive… We don't like to think of kids worrying about such things but of course they do. They have no choice, if they're intelligent and sensitive and alive to what's happening in the world." (Sendak, 1988, p 209-210)
Since he wasn't allowed to go outside and play very often, Maurice often had to entertain himself. His happiest memories of boyhood are of creating stories with his father and his older brother. Jack would write the stories down and Maurice would draw pictures to go along with them on sheets of cardboard. He still lists these books as the official first entries in his career-spanning bibliography. Not coincidentally, Jack became an author as an adult, and he has collaborated with his brother on a few books.
Although he wasn't often allowed to go outside to play, Maurice did have something very important and fun to look forward to every week: his family's Friday night trips to the movies. Sometimes, they would go into New York City to go out for a special dinner, and afterwards they'd see a film. New York itself enthralled young Maurice, but it was the movies that had the most profound influence on his work as an adult.
"If I'd been a Renaissance child and had lived in Rome, I could have gone down the block and seen Michelangelo working on the Sistine Chapel, and I would have been a much more enlightened and tasteful human being. But since I was a Brooklyn kid, there was only the Kingsway Theater and you made shift." (Sendak, 1988, p. 212-213) Sendak's favorite films as a child were the aforementioned "Pinocchio", and "the Wizard of OZ", "King Kong", the Busby Berkeley musicals, and the Laurel and Hardy comedies. He also spent a great deal of time reading comic books, and especially loved the lavishly illustrated fantasy stories of Windsor McKay. These books and movies would all be directly referenced in Sendak's three personal favorite books: Where the Wild Things Are, In the Night Kitchen, and Outside, Over There.
Maurice Sendak's books speak directly to children, and to the child within every adult. His characters are spunky heroines and sassy heroes who are far more emotionally complicated than the literary characters in many books for adults. In many ways, Sendak's characters are incarnations of himself: wildly imaginative people who aren't usually understood by other, more sensible people. Other people don't appreciate the Sendak heroes' use of imagination and their emotional intensity.
This is very important, because there seems to be a movement nowadays to shield children from anything that might upset them. The trend isn't exactly new, but the magnitude and intensity of it lately has become downright alarming. Children today are treated as delicately as porcelain dolls. They aren't allowed to play Tag during recess because it's too exciting and competitive. Teachers are told not to use red pens while correcting papers, because it might hurt their students' feelings.
What Sendak does in his best books is acknowledge something that these well-meaning adults have overlooked: Kids aren't stupid. They are amazingly perceptive and can handle the issues and ideas that many adults would rather shield them from.
"Children are extremely tough - they know exactly what's going to frighten their parents, and they don't ask questions that will upset mommy and daddy... you don't want to give them ulcers with questions they can't deal with. So you find out in the backyard, or from the landlady's daughter. But you do find out. Even before television, you found out. Isn't it kinder to give children the bitter pill in a work of art?" (Sendak, 1998, p. 23)
Maurice Sendak legitimizes the unspoken concerns of children. He deeply understands that every child faces fears and disappointments, happiness and wonder, and his books are celebrations of the imagination.
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On to Part Two!
And head over to The Realm and enjoy a gallery of bizarre cheap Halloween costumes. Meanwhile, in real life, I am hopefully planting those spring bulbs I mentioned before...

My thoughts on Comicon are coming later.

On a much, much happier note, after quite a long time in development limbo, we're finally getting Spike Jones' "Where the Wild Things Are" film. And if the "Labyrinth"-ish trailer is any indication, we get to look forward to...
...well, basically what a Spike Jones adaptation of a psychologically dense Maurice Sendak picture book should look like. It's not news by now that book adaptations trigger my "prepare to hate it" response, but this looks like it'll be amazing.
By the way, as an illustrator who wrote a thesis on Sendak and his art, it amuses me to no end that the studio executives were having such a hard time with... um, issues that were in the book (and apparently bothering nobody -- but it's a movie now so we can panic now!) for the past forty-six years.😒

(See also the uproar over: "Euw the big blue guy's naked!" "OMG, there's like fifty different endings why didn't the just pick one?" "The Martians are killed by germs? That's stupid! You're stupid!" And on and on. You wonder, sometimes, if people even know what a book *is*.)

Addendum: Read this interview and prepare to be twice as excited. We're finally getting a new children's film that is about something.