Maurice Sendak, brilliant picture book creator, dies

Maurice Sendak — the acclaimed, innovative, and challenging children’s picture book illustrator and writer — Maurice Sendak signing the ""Faithful Nutcracker"" lithograph at Tyler Graphics Ltd., Bedford Village, New York, 1984. Kenneth Tyler Photographerdied Tuesday at 83 in his Connecticut home.  Sendak’s detailed knowledge of book illustration combined with his ability to create beautiful picture books that dealt with difficult subjects for children positioned him as a acclaimed traditionalist who brilliantly broke conventional boundaries of children’s literature.  He is the Randolph Caldecott of American picture books. 

[Since I have posted this, WGLT's Charlie Schlenker posted his interview of me today about Sendak.  Here's a link to that interview where I add to this blog post.]

Sendak distinctly changed children’s literature with his famous trilogy of Where The Wild Things Are (1963), In the Night Kitchen (1970), and Outside Over There (1981).  He said that these books are about the same themes —boredom, fear, frustration, jealousy — and how children manage to come to grips with the realities of their lives.  He was often confronted by adults who found his books “troubling and frightening.” He accused them of wanting to sentimentalize childhood.  Sendak understood that children want to confront their fears and work through them.

Sendak believed that children deserved well-designed, beautiful books.  At the same time, he fearlessly wrote about difficult subject matters.  While parents, critics, and librarians may not have warmed to some of the topics, Sendak’s books were best sellers precisely because the topics they addressed touched a nerve while being stunning works of art. 

Not only was Sendak a brilliant picture book creator, he was also an insightful critic.  His brilliant essays in Caldecott & Co.: Notes on Books and Pictures (1990) ought to be read by anybody interested in children’s literature and picture books.  Sendak had an appreciation and sweep of understanding of both illustration and picture books that informed his work and is evident in these valuable essays.

In 1997, I nominated Sendak to be an Honorary Fellow of the Modern Language Association.  He is the only children’s picture book author to be in the company of authors who were nominated and elected since 1959 including such writers as Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Carlos Fuentes, Toni Morrison, Tom Stoppard, Margaret Atwood, and Seamus Heaney.  While Sendak was unable to attend that year’s MLA, he was courteous and collegial in our correspondence.

Sendak said that

“a picture book is not only what most people think it is, an easy thing to read to small children with a lot of pictures in it.  For me, it is a damned difficult thing to do… very much like a complicated poetic form that requires absolute concentration and control.”

A fitting book to read upon Sendak’s death may be Higgelty Pigglety Pop! or There Must be More to Life (1967), which he later developed into an opera – one of many opera projects that he collaborated on beginning in the 1980s.  Containing some of his best illustrations, the book is about Sendak’s beloved shaggy dog Jennie, a Sealyham Terrier.The Little Bear series is great for early readers. This illustration is from A Kiss for Little Bear with illustrations by Sendak, story by Elsie Holmelund Minarik

To read more about Sendak, I would suggest John Cech’s Angels and Wild Things: The Archetypal Poetics of Maurice Sendak and Amy Sonheim’s Maurice Sendak in the Twayne United States Author Series. The Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia has Sendak's papers and always celebrates his work with stylish enthusiasm.  Worth visiting if you are in Philadelphia.

And to see perhaps one of the last interviews of Sendak, check out Stephen Colbert’s interviews with him in January 20120 (here's part 2). In this lively interview, Sendak is curmudgeonly, gracious, gregarious, spunky, liberal, gay, free-wheeling, slightly mean, and smart.  "I don't write for children.  I write and somebody says that's for children.  I didn't set out to make children happy," he says.

Yesterday,  I gave my final exam in the ENG 372: Studies of Contemporary Literature for Young People.  Sendak appeared in his illustrations and quotations.  I am sure he would have hated it, but his place in the canon of children’s literature is undeniable.

Here's a link to more materials I have compiled about Sendak, particularly in relation to the book and film Where the Wild Things Are.

Sendak's bookplate

Excitement for The Hunger Games continues

The Hunger Games film opens in a few weeks and we've noticed that several stores are featuring new covers of The Hunger Games in paperback as well as some other books. There's the Official Illustrated Movie Companion, the Unauthorized Guide to the Series, The World of the Hunger Games, and a Guide to the Hunger Games.  Quite a few.

There's also the question:  Is the Hunger Games going to be bigger than Twilight?  The possibility is there, as this article in the New Jersey Star-Ledger proposes, since the series is popular not just with girls and women but also with boys.  There's a bigger audience to draw from.  Still, as this article points out, the clip previews show that the film is going to be significant different from the book. We're still sad that the first Percy Jackson film was so significantly different.  If the Hunger Games films is too different will it alienate audiences? 

But Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters seems to definitely be in production.  And we'll probably see that.

In the meantime, we're disappointed that the Hugo DVD didn't take more advantage of the possibility to including more early film materials and clips in the basic DVD.

Anticipating Scorsese's Hugo

Trailers for Hugo suggest the film has great possibilities for being a wonderful holiday family filmHugo (Asa Butterfield) and Isabelle (Chloë Moretz) in Hugo (2011)..  When I first heard about the film, I thought it a little unusual that Martin Scorsese would be directing Hugo and filming it in 3-D.  The book is a visual treat.  It  was the first chapter book and graphic novel to receive the Caldecott Award.  Yet, the idea of turning it into a film seemed charming, but worrisome.  Chris Van Allsberg's holiday picturebook The Polar Express became rather creepy in the film version that used high tech animation that made the characters seem less like people and more like robots.  Many teachers like this book, and film, because, perhaps, it allows them to talk about the Christmas holiday in the classroom without bringing in Christianity but still bringing in the related ethics.  On the opposite end of the religious spectrum, The Golden Compass film of 2007 based on the first book in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series has a haunting, dark world that is not at satisfying as the way it's described in the books. 

Ben Kingsley in Hugo.So, we'll see about how Hugo does.  The early reviews from the New York Film Festival in October are positive; looks like the film appeals to adults as well as kids. Scorsese's interview with The New York Times suggests that turning the book into a film had to be appealing for him on several levels, including the opportunity to re-create George Méliès’s glass studio. Scorsese said, "We started replicating scenes from Méliès films as best we could. ...With Méliès’s films, especially the hand-colored ones, it’s like illuminated manuscripts come alive. We shot Méliès shooting his films for five or six days. It was one of the best times I’ve had shooting a picture."

I do think that this is probably going to be a film for children 8 and up and very appealing to tweens.  The complicated storyline is not one that young children may be able to easily follow.

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Quidditch at ISU

ISU's new Quidditch team plays an amazing season of rough-and-tumble Quidditch.  My family and I enjoyed watching the lively games rendered for Muggle-style as the teams played hard last fall on the ISU Quad. The season seems to have two parts, fall and spring. Here's a link to the team's Facebook page.

Since this week we're studying Harry Potter in one of my classes, I thought I'd post a few photos from a match we saw last fall. The team is definitely worth checking out.  It's an amazing mash-up of book fans with a curiously interesting real game that's a cross between rugby, lacrosse, soccer and broom ball.

Instead of having the golden snitch a flying ball, in the Muggle version it's a person dressed as gold who runs around and hides.The players ride broomsticks while trying to get balls through the hoops.The play can get intense.

The fans are enthusiastic and creative as well.

Great upcoming local literature & film events

It's really spring!  The birds are chirping, tulips are blooming, and cool local children's literature and film events are coming up for central Illinois.

Whenever Candace Fleming comes to town it's a treat and she'll be here this Saturday, April 16, from 2 to 3 pm at the Normal Public Library.  Perhaps my favorite book of hers is The Lincolns: A scrapbook look at Abraham and Mary. Others in our house have enjoyed her chapter book The Fabled Fourth Graders of Aesop Elementary School and there's a new book about Fifth Graders. One of her most recent is the picture book Muncha! Muncha! Muncha!. We are reading her new book Amelia Lost about Amelia Earhart. After her talk, there will be refreshments and books available for purchase and autographing.

We'll be running over to the TheatresCool in downtown Bloomington shortly after that on Saturday to see the Broadway Workshop Performance: Comedy Tonight! directed by Cristen Susong.

Celebrate El Dia de los Ninos/El Dia de los Libros (Day of the Child/Day of the Book) on Saturday, April 30, at the Bloomington Public Library.  The fourth annual event, from 11 am to 1 pm, will feature a local soccer star, Dora the Explorer, an authentic Mexican band, Mexican crafts, and Mexican food.  Reading is important in all languages.

Finally, one of the highlights of the year is always going to EbertFest, the film festival at the University of Illinois-Champaign-Urbana, that celebrates Roger Ebert, films he enjoys, and the people who create them.  Even though Ebert's health is not as good as when the festival started, he continues to be an enthusiastic champion for great filmmaking.  This year the festival is April 27 - May 1.  It'sAt EbertFest a few years ago. held, once again, at the beautiful Virginia Theater, 203 W. Park Ave., in downtown Champaign. 

The experience of watching a film in the Virginia Theater with about 700 film enthusiasts on a beautiful spring afternoon when we all could be outside is always such a treat.  The people who go to EbertFest just love films.  They applaud, they clap, they laugh, they weep -- their participation as an audience makes the interesting films Ebert chooses even more wonderful to watch.  Then afterward, a key person from the film (usually the director or an actor) talks about the film.  Yep, right in central Illinois it's Hollywood for a few days.

Also, although festival passes sell out months in advance, we have always had success getting a ticket for specific films.  You just wait in line for about 20 to 30 minutes beforehand and you'll get a seat.  Maybe not the best seat on the main floor.  But we've always had a good seat.  Don't miss the opportunity.