The eminent children’s author Maurice Sendak – who died today at 83 – created one of the most beautiful articulations of the fantastical isolation of childhood in recent memory. Published in 1963, Where the Wild Things Are won the Caldecott Medal as the “most distinguished picture book” a year later, and in 1970 Sendak became the first American to win the prestigious Hans Christian Andersen Award for excellence in children’s book illustration. He’s been called the “Picasso of children’s literature”, an author who defined “a generation” of American children’s experience of literature, as playwright and long-time friend Tony Kushner once put it.
To hunt for Sendak’s legacy is to follow a trail of cultural relics across the decades. There are cheery tributes, lavished praise, Sendak’s own dry, worldly wisdom, lost anecdotes and miles of fan art. Take for instance Terrible Yellow Eyes, a project that ran from 2009 to 2010 and compiled a varied catalogue of Sendak-inspired artwork from over a hundred contributors. There’s the dozens of stories that sit contently in the archives of fanfiction.net, and the graffiti artists who’ve taken their spin on Max’s adventures public. Two years ago, Spike Jonze directed an ambitious screen adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are, and it wasn’t the first. Film versions of the fable have been around since the seventies, as has an opera and a piano concerto.
Sendak’s particular quality was his wry sense of humour and refusal to shy away from intelligent, mature prose in a pedantic genre saturated with morality tales. An author who happened to write books for children he was not, but rather a staunch defender of the honest imperfections of childhood: the darkness, the confusion, the need for escapism. “You cannot write for children. They’re much too complicated,” he once asserted. “You can only write books that are of interest to them. ” Sendak prided himself most on winning over those he wrote for, as evidenced in this endearing anecdote:
“Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters — sometimes very hastily — but this one I lingered over. I sent him a card and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, “Dear Jim: I loved your card.” Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, “Jim loved your card so much he ate it.” That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.” (from lost.net)
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