“And Max, the king of all wild things, was lonely and wanted to be where someone loved him best of all.”
“Why is my needle stuck in childhood? I don’t know…I guess that’s where my heart is.”
-Maurice Sendak, 1928-2012
“Children are willing to expose themselves to experiences. We aren’t. Grownups always say they protect their children, but they’re really protecting themselves. Besides, you can’t protect children. They know everything.”
Maurice died today, a child at the age of 83. Many of you know him because he created Max, King of All the Wild Things, but his other creations are just as dazzling, just as marvelous. His delicate sketches of Tien Pao and Glory-of-the-Republic lend such a tenderness to The House of Sixty Fathers that my son has to avoid looking at the pictures as we read the story: the pictures cut deep, pulling the words of the story deeper in the heart.
“An illustrator in my own mind – and this is not a truth of any kind – is someone who so falls in love with writing that he wishes he had written it, and the closest he can get to is illustrating it. And the next thing you learn, you have to find something unique in this book, which perhaps even the author was not entirely aware of. And that’s what you hold on to, and that’s what you add to the pictures: a whole Other Story that you believe in, that you think is there.”
As a home-school mom, Maurice’s work has been invaluable: Little Bear and Max helped me teach my children to read, and more importantly, to love to read. By the time we let Tien Pao break our hearts, Maurice’s work had succeeded: the kids love reading, and for this, we owe people like Maurice a debt we can never repay, for if one loves to read, they will love to learn, and to discover. Loving books means one is willing to place themselves in the shoes of someone else for awhile, and this makes us a little more human.
Maurice’s illustrations of Little Bear and his parents and friends are some of my favorite characters in children’s literature: their gentleness and imagination and kindness and wild unbridled curiosity are simply beautiful. The stories were the inspiration for a children’s show by the same name, which was wonderful and charming. Duck was absolutely hysterical, and Little Bear’s parents were quite possibly the only example of married well-adjusted intelligent parents that ever appeared on children’s television:
“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.”
Maurice understood the value of imagination, and he treasured it. Perhaps this is why his work is consistently filed under “children’s literature.” But, imagination is not just for children; it is for the honest, and the brave. Goodnight, Maurice. You will be missed.