Maurice Sendak 1928-2012
It’s a sad day. Maurice Sendak, author and illustrator of countless children’s literature classics, has passed away.
Here’s one of my favorite videos of Sendak, in younger days, discussing fantasy and reality.
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Maurice Sendak on the Origins of Serious Fantasy from We Love You So on Vimeo.
His work changed the landscape of children’s lit and has had lasting affects on millions of readers. Including me.
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About Travis Jonker
Travis Jonker is an elementary school librarian in Michigan. He writes reviews (and the occasional article or two) for School Library Journal and is a member of the 2014 Caldecott committee. You can email Travis at scopenotes@gmail.com, or follow him on Twitter: @100scopenotes.
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With Maurice Sendak’s death, I listened to Jennifer Ludden’s 2005 interview on NPR as well as the excerpts of several “Fresh Air” past interviews aired in memory of him on the day he died. Listening to Terry Gross speak with him in September 2011, I was struck by his tone. He was dying and many of his dear and dearest friends had died leaving him feel heartbroken and lonely. And given the comfort he had with Terry due to his previous experiences talking openly with her, he spoke both of being happy in his old age while also crying frequently. And then, maybe due in part to both his sensitivity, borne of a sickly child who spent so much time in bed with time to think and all that meant for his creative mind, and also the background of wrenching holocaust reminiscences often related by his parents about his exterminated extended family, he speaks to Terry telling her that he had never said some of the things he told her to other interviewers…or others.
At one point he says that no one else, except Terry, had zeroed in on the two key lines in his latest book, “Bumble-Ardy.” Bumble had given himself a ninth birthday party with some rambunctious friends only to be scolded by his aunt upon her return home and the “bargain” he makes with her. Never again, says Bumble-Ardy’s enraged aunt, will you have a birthday. Oh, I will never ever turn ten, he exclaims. “What a bargain that is,” said Terry. And in the midst of her statements Sendak says what are to me memorable words spoken to an interviewer, but not surprising that they are directed to one of Terry’s stature and sense of what to ask, to get insights into an individual that are not easily inferred from the artist’s oeuvre.
SENDAK: You’ve just picked the two lines of the book that are my favorite lines. There’s something so poignant and extremely funny, if you could say that’s funny about his answer, I’ll never turn 10. In fact, it sums up my life, it sums up my work. What is mad and ludicrous and funny and odd is true.
What you just said is extremely insightful. Nobody has said anything like that. But I always expect that from you. Those two lines are essential. But I won’t pretend that I know exactly what it means. I only know it touches me deeply, and when I thought of it, I was so happy I thought of it. It came to me, which is what the creative act is all about.