Maurice Sendak

Written By Rachel Michelle Wilson

Here is my article about Maurice Sendak’s life and another one about his creative process and philosophy.

Some fun facts about his books

A Hole is to Dig

  • Inspired by Wilhelm Busch and animation

  • About the book, Sendak said: “It was like being part of a revolution. This was the first time in modern children’s-book history that a book had come directly from kids. The notion was so startling to some academics, in fact, that the book was included in a course at Columbia on the uses of language. And, you know, some of those definitions have become part of the language. Working on that book, I learned something else, too. When it seemed to me to be all done, Ruth Krauss pointed out that I was giving the kids who would read the book middle-class attitudes toward their roles. I had the boys doing what boys were expected to do and girls doing what they were expected to do. God forbid a boy should be jumping rope! Of course, that isn’t the way it is, and at the last minute I made some quick changes.”

Where the Wild Things Are

  • Originally called Where the Wild Horses Are, full of flip book inspired dancing…until Sendak realized he couldn’t draw horses

  • Chose “Things” because he could draw anything and no one could critique him for not drawing it right

  • Sendak felt like his style hadn’t solidified until this book — his influences melded together in a way that became more him

  • The wild things were based on his Jewish relatives who said things like, “You’re so cute I could eat you up.”

  • About the book, he said: “How many people have a five year old child care for their fathers all through his life? That kid in the silly woolsuit has made my life pleasurable. Not many people have children who are so financilaly dependeable. Which has allowed me to invest in all kinds of experimental work. One should be happy to have one book like that.”

  • Lots of people asked him to do a second book. He found that “the most boring idea imaginable.”

  • “The fun of that book is a perilous tightrope of a little boy very vulnerable to these huge creatures and the absurdity of his having control of them by staring into their yellow eyes. It’s what every child would like, to have control over such things. Kids are not afraid of them because Max is not afraid of them.”

  • “I think Max is my truest creation. Like all kids, he believes in a world where a child can skip from fantasy to reality in the conviction that both exist.”

In the Night Kitchen

  • As a kid, he didn’t like how “everything good happen[ed] when children went to bed.” So he made a book about it.

  • Main character is named after Mickey Mouse

  • Heavily influenced by comics and American animator Windsor McCay and the look of the chefs was inspired by slap-stick comedian Oliver Hardy

  • Banned a lot for depicting a naked boy (yes, lots of baby penises in this book). Sendak was surprised over this: “To me it was just the most natural thing in the world that we all knew what we looked like. And were rather pleased if we are lucky until we are told otherwise.”

  • “I didn’t set out to cause a scandal. I set out to do a very particular work where he had to be naked in order confront the dream he was in. You don’t go into a dream wearing fruit of the loom underwear or pjs. You go tuto, yourself, your being. That’s why he was naked. It was idiocy what went on over that book for many years.

Outside Over There

  • One of Sendak’s favorites and one of the most personal as the main character is inspired by his sister

  • Inspired by a trip to Europe where he fell in love with the german romantics, espeically Runge.

  • Making it “ brought on a nervous breakdown of monumental force. It slammed me ot the ground. I got that close to the fire. I got that close to the fire.”

  • Got some pushback for having a fierce girl protagonist but Sendak thought that was absurd

Pierre

  • Inspired by flip books — designed so that the expressions and movement of his body change as you flip through.

  • Also inspired by dance and especially Charlie Chaplin

Charlotte and the White Horse

  • Inspired by William Blake (one of Sendak’s favorites) and Marc Chagall

Mr. Rabbit and the Lovely Present

  • Inspired by painter Winslow Homer

Seven Tales

  • Inspired by gothic artists

Brundibar

  • Based on a play that was written for Jewish children in an orphan asylum during WWII. Before they could perform the play, they were taken to concentration camps. Hitler used this to his advantage by having the children perform the play to prove to diplomats how well everyone was being treated. After the performance, the children were killed. Sadly the strategy worked.

  • Sendak said he’d been carrying this weight around since childhood and creating the book was a part of releasing it.

  • Inspired by Grimm fairytales, specifically Hansel and Gretel

Kenny’s Window

  • The first book that Sendak wrote and illustrated

  • Inspired by his lonely childhood spent at the window

Bumble-ardy

  • He made this book as his partner was dying. “When I did Bumble-ardy, I was intensely aware of death, Eugene was dying in the house while he made it. I did Bumble-ardy to save myself — I didn’t want to die with him. I wanted to live in that way a human being does.”

  • His favorite line was “I’ll never turn 10” because, “It sums up my life. It sums up my work. What is mad and ludicrous and funny and odd is true.” To him it was about the fragility, the irrationality, and the comedy of life.

  • He said, “Bumble-arty was the combination of the deepest pain and the wondrous feeling of coming into my own. and it a took a long time.”

Resources I’ve explored so far:

BOOKS

  • Wild Things Are Happening: The Art of Maurice Sendak by Maurice Sendak

  • There’s A Mystery There: The Primal Vision of Maurice Sendak by Jonathan Cott

  • The Art of Maurice Sendak: 1980 to the Present by Tony Kushner

  • Maurice Sendak: A Celebration of the Artist and his Work

VIDEOS

ARTICLES

OTHER

Additional resources recommended to me by cool people:

  • bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001sf5m

  • https://johnnez.blogspot.com/2007/03/this-was-it-do-or-die-5.html

  • https://kenpriebe.substack.com/p/a-decade-of-studying-sendak

  • https://www.abebooks.com/first-edition/Caldecott-Sendak-Maurice-Farrar-Straus-Giroux/30395595045/bd

Rachel Michelle Wilson
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