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

Children's Lit does well with Academy Awards ... or were kids and films misunderstood?

Martin's Scorsese's film interpretation of Brian Selznick's award-winning graphic novel The Invention of Hugo Martin Scorsese shows Brian Selznick's book to young cast members while filming Hugo.Cabret received five Academy Awards last night.  Pretty impressive.  Not the big picture of the year award -- that went to The Artist. But both films received the same number of awards.  Actually, Hugo was nominated for 11 awards, the most of any film this year. Curiously, too, both The Artist and Hugo are somewhat wistful film meditations on early cinema.

We were glad to read on School Library Journal that Brian Selznick was in the audience at the (former) Kodak Theater.

"Being on the red carpet, being in the room live as the telecast was underway, hearing the name Hugo called five times..., all of it was an experience I will never forget," Selznick told SLJ. "[I]t was really fun to introduce myself to famous people by saying I wrote the book that inspired Hugo and having them throw their arms around me, thank me for the story, and tell me they've seen the movie more than once... and some of them had even read the book and loved it too!"

In addition, the award for best animated short film  went to William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg's The A still from The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr Morris LessmoreFantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore. Here's a link to the 15 minute YouTube video. It's also cool that the film was created by a Moonbot, a Shreveport, Louisiana, studio.  Good to see animation developed in the U.S. and from a studio in the south. It is also available as an Apple app.

The animated film is "a poignant, potent ode to books," according to the Kirkus Review, which seems ironic to incapsulize in an iPhone app.

William Joyce is another imaginative children's picture book author as well as an Emmy-winning television creator of Rolie-Polie Olie and George Shrinks. Disney's 2007 animated film Meet the Robinsons is based on Joyce's book A Day with Wilbur Robinson.

On the other hand...

As YPulse points out today, last night's Academy Award program was not particularly welcoming to tweens or teens.  It began with Billy Crystal putting on Justin Bieber for the "18 - 24 crowd" when, in reality, his core fan base is more 12 - 16 year olds, and primarily girls, too.

Oddly, only two songs were nominated for best song in an era when songs within films, and television shows, are important landmarks to creating a film's environment and atmosphere.  But neither song was performed live.  Why not?  "Man or a Muppet" is such a catchy tune, in an odd way, that even Terri Gross, interviewer of NPR program "Fresh Air," admits she likes it. 

Perhaps Justin Beiber could have performed "Man or a Muppet."  That might have excited Martin Scorsese's daughter, who was sitting next to him during the awards ceremony and looking a bit bored for most of the night.  Or, Why not have Oscar the Grouch present an Oscar?

The final Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 was nominated for three Academy Awards, but did not receive a statue in any of them.  Huffington Post's high school blogger Marissa Piazolla understands Harry Potter fan's sadness when the final film failed to recieve an Oscar this time.  In the categories that Harry Potter was running against Hugo, I actually thought Harry Potter had the better achievement.

On a final note, did you watch closely the preview for The Hunger Games?  Didn't it look like the older sister Catnis is giving the Mockingjay pin to her younger sister Prim before the reaping?  But in the book, Catnis receives the pin from the mayor's daughter when Catnis is about to go off to the reaping.  Catnis isn't familiar with the importance of the Mockingjay pin at that point.  Clearly there are changes afoot.

But we're still going to see the film when it opens.

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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Mary Blair Googled!

Today would be Mary Blair's 100th birthday and to celebrate Google created a Google Doodle inspired by Mary Blair's art.  Very cool! 

Just wanted to mention again that I have a chapter in my book, The Place of Lewis Carroll in Children's Literature, on the Alice in Wonderland book that uses  Mary Blair's original artwork for the Disney film and Jon Scieszka's adaptation. That chapter essay, "Show Me, Don't (Re)Tell Me: Jon Scieszka Revisits Wonderland" is available in .pd format here.  Blair's work continues to show an amazing imagination but the usually funny and clever Scieszka seems a little intimated by adapating Carroll's work.  I'm working on a few other ideas related to Mary Blair's art as well.

Go Mary Blair! 

The Mary Blair Google Doodle.

more artwork from Mary Blair Disneyland exhibitFrom the Mary Blair exhibit at Disneyland in Summer 2011

Mary Blair exhibit at Disneyland & Matisse influences

Mary Blair's amazing artwork for Disney is the topic of the  Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' 17th Marc Davis Celebration of Animation lecture tomorrow night.  Looks like a fun, interesting panel the creators from Disney and Pixar who've worked on Toy Story 3, Monsters, Inc., Aladdin, Up, Pocahontas and more. Of course, the panel is already sold out, but it would be great to be a fly on the wall.

I'm fascinated by Blair's work. I included a chapter in my recent book, The Place of Lewis Carroll in Children's Literature, about the re-working of Alice in Wonderland by Jon Scieszka using the art that Blair created for Disney as an inspiration for his animated film.  Not the best Alice adaptation because Scieszka doesn't bring his usual humor and confidence to Blair's dark and stylized work.

When we were in Disneyland during the summer, we were able to see an exhibit on Mary Blair's work.  I thought that the panel talk would be a good opportunity to post some of the photos from that exhibit.  The exhibit was near the entryway to Disneyland in the area on Main Street devoted to the history of Walt Disney and the theme park.  It's one of my favorite sections because the older Disneyland is the one that seeped into my imagination while watching the Sunday night Disney television and The Mickey Mouse Club.

Looking at the photos again, which are obviously not perfect photos, reminds me how much Mary Blair was inspired by Henri Matisse cutouts.

Matisse's La Tristesse du roi (Sorrows of the King), 1952Matisse is noted as saying "To look all life long with the eyes of a child."

Anfitrite, 1947The Eschimo , 1947

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