Maurice Sendak

For more information on Maurice Bernard Sendak, visit Britannica.com.

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Award winning illustrator and author, Maurice Sendak (born 1928), has been a major force in the evolution of children's literature since 1960. He is considered by many critics and scholars to be the first artist to deal openly with the emotions of children in his drawings both in books and on the stage, in his opera and ballet sets and costumes. This ability to accurately depict raw emotion is what makes him so appealing to children.

Most people born in the last half of the twentieth century have read at least one of the more than 80 children's books written or illustrated by Sendak. Some critics contend that his drawings depict emotions too strongly for children to handle. In spite of this criticism, he has won almost every major American and international award for children's books and has been a major influence on several generations of children's writers.

A Sickly Child

Sendak was born in Brooklyn, New York on June 10, 1928. He was the youngest son of Phillip and Sarah Schindler Sendak, Polish immigrants from small Jewish villages outside of Warsaw. Along with his sister Natalie, and brother, Jack, he grew up in a poor section of Brooklyn. His family moved to a new apartment every time one of their landlords decided to paint because his mother could not stand the smell of fresh paint. Suffering from measles, double pneumonia, and scarlet fever between the ages of two and four, Sendak was very rarely allowed outside to play. Between the frequent moves and the many illnesses, he did not make many friends and spent most of his time in bed, watching the other children play.

To pass the time, Sendak drew pictures and read comic books. His favorite was Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse. When he was well enough, he and his parents attended the local movie houses. Occasionally his older sister would take him to Manhattan to see movies at the Roxy or Radio City Music Hall. Films of the 1930s, including the Busby Berkeley musicals and Laurel and Hardy comedies, had a profound influence on some of his illustrations.

The other great influence on his young life was his background as the son of Jewish immigrants from Poland. A portrait of his bearded maternal grandfather, who had died before Sendak's birth, was a prominent memory, as were his parents' stories of life in Poland. His mother told of hiding in the basement during attacks by the Cossacks on her village, while his father shared memories of a more comfortable middle class life. Sendak developed a rather pessimistic view of life from his parents' tales, which found its way into many of his own stories. Though his family was not particularly religious, they did attend services on High Holy Days and lived in an immigrant Jewish neighborhood. These were the people who populated his first illustrations, which some reviewers criticized as being too European. According to Sendak in Lane's Down the Rabbit Hole: Adventures and Misadventures in the Realm of Children's Literature, "There is not a book I have written or picture I have drawn that does not, in some way, owe [those neighborhood children] its existence."

School proved difficult for the young Sendak. He was obese and sometimes stammered. Creativity was not encouraged. Sendak was not a particularly good student and only excelled in his art classes. At home, he and his brother Jack made up their own storybooks by combining newspaper photographs or comic strip segments with drawings they made of family members. Sendak's father had the ability to create wonderful, imaginative tales that sometimes lasted for several nights. Both boys inherited this storytelling gift which they would later use to create books of their own.

World War II contributed to Sendak's view of the world as a dark and frightening place. All of his aunts and uncles in Poland died in the Holocaust; Natalie's fiancé was killed; and Jack was stationed in the Pacific. Sendak spent the war years in high school, working on the school yearbook, literary magazine, and newspaper. After school, he worked at All-American Comics, drawing background details for the Mutt and Jeff comic strip.

The summer of 1946 to the summer of 1948 were the happiest two years in Sendak's young life. He worked in the warehouse of a Manhattan window-display company called Timely Service and lived away from home for the first time. Sendak met the kinds of people he had not known in Brooklyn-real artists, who considered their work for Timely Service just a job that allowed them to paint seriously at night.

After leaving his first full time job in 1948, Sendak and his brother Jack created models for six wooden mechanical toys in the style of German eighteenth-century lever-operated toys. They were designed to portray parts in nursery rhymes and fairy tales. Jack engineered the toys, and Sendak did the painting and carving. Natalie sewed the costumes. The brothers took the models to the F.A.O. Schwartz toy store, where the prototypes were admired but considered too expensive to produce. Richard Nell, the window-display director, was impressed with Sendak's talent and hired him as an assistant in the window display department. This enabled Sendak to earn a living in the daytime and attend the Art Student's League at night. He took classes in oil painting, life drawing, and composition. He also spent time in the children's book department studying the great nineteenth-century illustrators (George Cruikshank, Walter Crane, and Randolph Caldecott) as well as the new postwar European illustrators (Hans Fischer, Felix Hoffmann, and Alois Carigiet).

Illustrated First Book

While at Schwartz, Sendak met Ursula Nordstrom, the distinguished children's book editor at Harper and Brothers. She liked his work and offered him the chance to illustrate his first book, Marcel Ayme's The Wonderful Farm. They formed a close relationship, which would last for many years. According to Sendak in The Art of Maurice Sendak, "My happiest memories, in fact, are of my earliest career, when Ursula was my confidante and best friend. She really became my home and the person I trusted most." Sendak's first great success as the illustrator for Ruth Krauss's award winning A Hole Is to Dig was arranged by Nordstrom. Sendak was able to give up his full time job at Schwartz, move into an apartment in Greenwich Village, and become a free-lance illustrator.

The years between 1951 and 1962 are considered by Sendak to be his apprenticeship. He illustrated as many books as he could and learned to be flexible and adapt his drawings to the style of the text. According to Sendak, "I was going to learn how to draw in a variety of styles. I think my books are identifiable, but they all look different because illustrators are secondary to the text. If you insist on being primary to the text, then you're are bad illustrator." His own books during this period were not outstanding, with the exception of The Sign on Rosie's Door written in 1960. He based Rosie on a real girl he knew from his old neighborhood, and created a model for the typical Sendak character: strong-willed, honest, and imaginative.

Where the Wild Things Are

With the publication of Where the Wild Things Are in 1963, Sendak felt that he had ended his apprenticeship. His childhood experiences, years of illustrations for other authors' books, and psychoanalysis came together in the fantasies of Max, the boy in the story who is sent to bed without his supper, and the monsters he encounters in the world of the wild things. The story is rooted in the very real fears that children have of being left alone or not cared for by their parents. Many critics and child psychologists, such as Bruno Bettelheim, felt that the book was too scary for sensitive children. Sendak was vindicated when the book won the Caldecott Medal in 1964. In his acceptance speech, he said, "… from their earliest years children live on familiar terms with disrupting emotions, fear and anxiety are an intrinsic part of their everyday lives, they continually cope with frustrations as best they can. And it is through fantasy that children achieve catharsis. It is the best means they have for taming Wild Things."

Just as Sendak's life appeared to finally be on track, disaster struck. In 1967, he learned that his mother had developed cancer, he suffered a major coronary attack, and his beloved dog Jenny died. In spite of his troubles, he completed In the Night Kitchen in 1972. This book generated more controversy because he showed a boy in full frontal nudity. Librarians drew diapers over the child. "It's as if my book contains secret information that kids would be better off not knowing. This whole idea, of course, is ridiculous." Sendak moved to Ridgefields, Connecticut, in 1972. There he worked ten-hour days on other authors' books as well as his own. Outside Over There, which he considers one of his more significant books, was written during this period.

Opera Beckoned

By 1980, Sendak felt that he had done all that he could in children's literature and was ready to try something new. He was invited to design the sets and costumes for the Houston Grand Opera's production of Mozart's The Magic Flute. This was a wonderful opportunity, since Mozart was Sendak's favorite composer. He designed sets that he called "subterranean and bedeviled." This began a long collaboration which included fourteen works, the latest being Hansel and Gretel in 1998. Children, lost and alone, who are ultimately rescued and returned to their parents was a perfect Sendak theme. In TCI Sendak explains, "My main purpose in doing this opera, and doing it now, at this age [69], is that I'm overwhelmed by the abuse of children. Hansel and Gretel is a powerful analogy to modern day child abandonment and cruelty, an opera about pertinent forms of neglect. To mount it in a cutesy German forest is to limit it. Why is the fairy tale so famous? Because it's terrifying."

Sendak also designed sets for ballets, most notably The Nutcracker, which he rewrote to suit his own vision of the story, and his own Where the Wild Things Are. A shy man who dislikes crowds, Sendak rarely attends the opera or ballet himself.

Sendak sanctioned the first museum exhibit of his art at the Please Touch Museum in Philadelphia in 1995. Oversize characters from four of his most popular books, including Where the Wild Things Are are included in the permanent exhibit. He has also collaborated on films and television projects involving his work. Sendak will never be mistaken for Walt Disney. Through the years he has remained true to his vision of life as seen through the eyes of a child.

Further Reading

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Gale, 1987.

Amusement Business, Nov. 18, 1996, p34.

Dance Magazine February, 1997, p. 124.

Detroit News, January 10, 1997, p. A5; October 20, 1997, p. B5.

TCI, April, 1998, p. 24.

Contemporary Authors. Gale, http://www.galenet.com (February 15, 1999).

Sendak, Maurice (1928– ), American illustrator, writer, and set designer. Sendak is easily the most important designer of children's books in the English‐speaking world; winner of the Hans Christian Andersen prize in 1970, he has continued to evolve as a writer and illustrator.

Early in his career Sendak illustrated many books written by contemporaries (Ruth Krauss and Elsie Minarik among them). Later, however, he turned to older books, often fairy tales: Seven Tales by Hans Christian Andersen (1959), tales by Wilhelm Hauff and Clemens Brentano (1960–2), The Golden Key and The Light Princess by George MacDonald (1967, 1969). He also illustrated a collection of stories based on Jewish folk material by Isaac Bashevis Singer (Zlateh the Goat, 1966). He seems most drawn to the strange mixture of realism and fantasy, piety and violence, in the Grimms' tales: he has produced The Juniper Tree, 27 tales in two volumes, with translations by Lore Segal and Randall Jarrell (1973); King Grisly‐Beard (1974); and Dear Mili, a tale found in an 1816 letter by Wilhelm Grimm (1988). The influence of romantic artists like William Blake, Samuel Palmer, Philipp Otto Runge, and Caspar David Friedrich—as well as of 19th‐century book illustrators like Walter Crane and George Cruikshank and of American popular culture—has become steadily more evident in his work, as has his love for Mozart.

In his own picture books, Sendak draws deeply on fairy‐tale motifs and impulses. His elegiac fantasy Higglety Pigglety Pop! (1967) traces the journey of a terrier, Jennie, to a wider world of artistic experience, including a climactic performance in the Mother Goose World Theater. The three books in his major ‘trilogy’—Where the Wild Things Are (1963), In the Night Kitchen (1970), and Outside Over There (1981)—differ markedly in style and texture, but all feature a child's movement from anger or fear into a fantastic inner world where the child's own actions resolve the conflicts.

In the late 1970s Sendak began designing sets and costumes for operas in collaboration with the director Frank Corsaro: first Mozart's Magic Flute in 1979, then Janáček's Cunning Little Vixen (1981), Prokofiev's Love of Three Oranges (1982), Mozart's Idomeneo (1990), and Humperdinck's Kinder‐ und Hausmärchen (1997). All of them show his delight in the theatrical and the fantastic—speaking animals, battles of polarized forces, symbolic objects and figures. Some of these operas later became picture books, as his designs for the ballet The Nutcracker in 1984. He has also collaborated in turning his own books into television shows (Really Rosie, Starring the Nutshell Kids in 1975) and into operas (Where the Wild Things Are in 1979 and Higglety Pigglety Pop! in 1985, both with music by Oliver Knussen).

Bibliography

• Cech, John, Angels and Wild Things: The Archetypal Poetics of Maurice Sendak (1995).
• Lanes, Selma G., The Art of Maurice Sendak (1980).
• Tatar, Maria, “‘Wilhelm Grimm/Maurice Sendak: Dear Mili and the Art of Dying Happily Ever After’”, in Off with their Heads! (1992).

— Elizabeth Wanning Harries

Maurice Sendak's In the Night Kitchen

Happy 77th birthday to Maurice Sendak, the creator of Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen. The award-winning author/illustrator brought Where the Wild Things Are to the stage in 1979, and in 1983 he designed a stage production of Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker for the Pacific Northwest Ballet. In 1970, Sendak was the first American illustrator to be awarded the prestigious Hans Christian Andersen Award, for his entire body of work.

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From our Archives: Today's Highlights, June 10, 2005

Sendak, Maurice Bernard, 1928-, American writer and illustrator of children's books, b. Brooklyn, N.Y. His beautifully drawn, wildly imaginative, often fantastic, and sometimes controversial illustrations appear in dozens of children's books, including The Sign on Rosie's Door (1960) and Where the Wild Things Are (1963), which he also wrote, as well as In the Night Kitchen (1970), Outside over There (1981), and We Are All in the Dumps with Jack and Guy (1993). He has also illustrated a number of adult works, e.g., Melville's Pierre (1995). Since the mid-1980s Sendak has devoted an increasing amount of his time to theatrical work. He has designed a number of musical productions, including Mozart's The Magic Flute, a musical version of his own Where the Wild Things Art, the Metropolitan Opera's production of Prokofiev's Love for Three Oranges (1985), and the Holocaust-themed A Selection (1999), created with the Pilobolus Dance Theater. Based on a 1938 children's opera by Hans Krása performed (1942) in the Terezin concentration camp, Sendak's picture book Brundibar (2003), with text by Tony Kushner, was also produced as an opera designed by Sendak, with a libretto by Kushner (2003). The two also collaborated on a version of Martinů's 1937 opera, Comedy on the Bridge. Sendak also is the artistic director of his own theater company, the Night Kitchen.

Bibliography

See S. G. Lanes, The Art of Maurice Sendak (1980, repr. 1998); T. Kushner, The Art of Maurice Sendak: 1980 to the Present (2003); studies by A. Sonheim (1991) and J. Cech (1995).

1963

Where the Wild Things Are. Sendak achieves his greatest success with this Caldecott Medal-winning picture book about a boy banished to his bedroom without his supper. He deals with his anger by imagining himself king of an island filled with enormous, frightening monsters. Critically acclaimed and controversial, Sendak is one of the first children's writers to deal frankly with the fears and anxieties of childhood. Where the Wild Things Are is the first in a trilogy, to be followed by In the Night Kitchen (1970) and Outside over There (1981), which, in Sendak's words, are "all variations on the same theme: how children master various feelings--anger, boredom, fear, frustration, jealousy--and manage to come to grips with the realities of their lives."

(1928–)

(Maurice Bernard Sendak)

The first American to win a Hans Christian Andersen International Medal and the first recipient of the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Prize, Maurice Sendak is credited as one of the most influential illustrators of late twentieth-century children's literature. With the Caldecott Medal-winning Where the Wild Things Are, Sendak led the way in creating more realistic child characters, moving away from the nostalgic models of innocence and sweetness portrayed in books published before the 1960s. By creating drawings inspired by the paintings of Degas and Cassatt as much as by nineteenth-century illustrators and modern cartoons, he also quickly demonstrated his unusual adaptability. Reflecting the view of many, critic John Rowe Townsend, in his Written for Children: An Outline of English-Language Children's Literature, dubbed Sendak "the greatest creator of picture books in the hundred-odd years' history of the form."

Despite his popularity, Sendak has also been the subject of some controversy. "Critics of Sendak's work often argue that youngsters are not ready for the themes and images he presents, wrote Selma G. Lanes in her The Art of Maurice Sendak. "Sendak has forthrightly confronted such sensitive subject matters as childhood anger, sexuality, or the occasionally murderous impulses of raw sibling rivalry," This "honesty has troubled or frightened many who would wish to sentimentalize childhood—to shelter children from their own psychological complexity or to deny that this complexity exists," explained Dictionary of Literary Biography contributor John Cotham. For Sendak, this exploration of children's feelings has been more personal. As he revealed to Steven Heller in Innovators of American Illustration, "my work was an act of exorcism, an act of finding solutions so that I could have peace of mind and be an artist and function in the world as a human being and a man. My mind doesn't stray beyond my own need to survive."

The son of Jewish immigrants from Poland, Sendak grew up in a poor Brooklyn neighborhood with his older brother, Jack, and sister, Natalie. His family never stayed in one neighborhood for very long, moving from apartment to apartment every time their landlords painted because Sendak's mother could not stand the smell of fresh paint. Sendak was a sickly child, suffering from measles, double pneumonia, and scarlet fever between the ages of two and four, and because his parents did not like him playing outside for fear he would become sick, he also had difficulty making friends. Treated like a semi-invalid, the young boy became obsessed with the idea that he might not have long to live. "I was a miserable kid," he confessed to Lanes.

Sendak found escape from his childhood misery through drawing, reading, movies, music, and his imagination. His favorite reading included comic books featuring Mickey Mouse and other Disney characters, and some of his illustrations clearly reflect this early influence. He also loved musicals and comedy films starring Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, while in music his taste veered toward Mozart and the classics. Because his family could not afford piano lessons, he expressed his creativity by drawing and writing stories, and during his days spent sick in bed would sketch the people and houses in his neighborhood, dreaming up fantasies for them to be in. He learned to make up stories from his father, who amused the Sendak children with fantastic tales. At age seven, Sendak and his brother, Jack, started writing down stories on cardboard discarded from shirt wrappings. Jack would also become a children's author, and two of his books have been illustrated by Sendak.

In high school Sendak had a job creating backgrounds for the comic strips "Mutt and Jeff," "Tippy," and "Captain Stubbs"; he also wrote his own comic strip for his school newspaper and illustrated a physics book, Atomics for the Millions, for one of his teachers. After he graduated, he opted out of college. Instead, he worked for about two years in a warehouse in Manhattan. Leaving that job in 1948, he designed mechanical wooden toys with Jack that the brothers tried to sell to famous New York toy company, F.A.O. Schwartz. Although no sales were forthcoming, Sendak was hired to work on the store's window displays. One of his displays was seen by noted illustrator Leonard Weisgard, who offered Sendak a commission to illustrate Good Shabbos, Everybody.

While Sendak was working for Schwartz, he attended classes at the Art Student's League, and there his instructor, John Groth, told him that, because of his talent, his time would be better spent actively practiced his art in the real world. Taking Groth's advice, Sendak left art school and tried submitting his drawings to publishing houses. Editors felt his work was too old-fashioned, though, with its strong influences of nineteenth-century illustrators such as George Cruikshank, John Tenniel, Wilhelm Busch, and Louis Maurice Boutet de Monvel. The intricate, cross-hatching style Sendak had adopted from them was nothing like the simpler style preferred by book editors in the 1940s and 1950s.

Fortunately, F.A.O. Schwartz's children's book department head Frances Christie introduced Sendak to Harper and Brothers editor Ursula Nordstrom, who assigned him illustration projects that helped him develop his craft and reputation. "I loved her on first meeting," Sendak remembered in The Art of Maurice Sendak. "My happiest memories, in fact, are of my earliest career, when Ursula was my confidante and best friend. She really became my home and the person I trusted most." Nordstrom arranged for Sendak to be the illustrator for Ruth Krauss's A Hole Is to Dig, the book that first established Sendak as an important illustrator. A Hole Is to Dig was such a popular and critical success that Sendak was able to quit his job at F.A.O. Schwartz and work as a freelancer.

With Nordstrom's help, Sendak learned how to be flexible and adapt his drawings to the texts they accompanied. His illustrations show great variation, from the line drawings of Kenny's Window and Where the Wild Things Are to the cartoonish style of In the Night Kitchen to the highly detailed, cross-hatching style found in Outside over There and his drawings for the books by the Brothers Grimm. He also illustrated as many books as he could, adding to his recognition.

Many books featuring Sendak's illustrations have become popular and critical successes, among them the "Little Bear" series, written by Else Minarik, which proved so popular that four titles were added to the series in 2002, almost fifty years after Little Bear debuted in 1957. With the encouragement of Nordstrom, the il-lustrator also managed to find the time to write his own texts, and Kenny's Window and Very Far Away became his first published self-authored books. With The Sign on Rosie's Door he created his first hit with critics. Rosie is based on a real girl Sendak recalled from his Brooklyn childhood. The book draws from the sketches he once made of Rosie and her friends, and the story line uses actual events and quotes the real Rosie directly in some cases. The Sign on Rosie's Door focuses on a group of children with nothing to do on a long summer day in the city. Rosie, a somewhat bossy, but friendly and highly imaginative ten year old, shows her friends how to use fantasy to chase away their boredom. This book led to Sendak's first venture into live theater when he designed the sets and wrote lyrics for a stage version produced in 1980.

The Nutshell Library features some of the characters from The Sign on Rosie's Door. Comprised of an alphabet book, a counting book, a book about the seasons, and a cautionary tale—all measuring only two-and-one-half by four inches—The Nutshell Library books have been highly praised for Sendak's skill "at integrating text, design, and illustrations," according to Cotham. Today, they are still considered among the artist's most successful efforts.

After illustrating several picture books for other authors, Sendak decided to write several more picture books, and he considers Where the Wild Things Are, In the Night Kitchen, and Outside over There to form a loose-knit trilogy. Although the three stories seem unrelated, as the artist explained in The Art of Maurice Sendak, they "are all variations on the same theme: how children master various feelings—anger, boredom, fear, frustration, jealousy—and manage to come to grips with the realities of their lives." Each story involves the main character's voyaging into a fantasy world: In Where the Wild Things Are Max is sent to his room without supper after arguing with his mother and deals with his anger by imagining himself sailing to an island ruled by enormous, frightening monsters and becoming their king; In the Night Kitchen a boy named Mickey helps a group of all-night bakers make goodies in a strange city by scouting down the milk needed for the bakers' cake; and in Outside over There Oda, who is very jealous of her baby brother, neglects him, until one day goblins kidnap the baby and take him to another world "outside over there."

Parts of Sendak's books are inspired by the author/illustrator's personal memories. For example, the monsters in Where the Wild Things Are were inspired by the artist's hated Brooklyn relatives. "I wanted the wild things to be frightening," Sendak remarked in The Art of Maurice Sendak. "But why? It was probably at this point that I remembered how I detested my Brooklyn relatives as a small child.... They'd lean way over with their bad teeth and hairy noses, and say something threatening like 'You're so cute I could eat you up.' And I knew if my mother didn't hurry up with the cooking, they probably would."

In the Night Kitchen was inspired by more recent memories. In 1967 Sendak suffered a heart attack, then lost his mother and beloved Sealyham terrier, Jennie, to cancer. Two years later, his father also died. After these tragic events, the artist left New York City and moved to Connecticut. In the Night Kitchen was his way "to ... say goodbye to New York," as he told Martha Shirk in a Chicago Tribune article, "and say goodbye to my parents, and tell a little bit about the narrow squeak I had just been through." In the story, Mickey's brush with death when he is nearly baked in a cake symbolizes Sendak's own close call. In the Night Kitchen, the artist concluded in a New York Times article by Lisa Hammel, is about his "victory over death."

Sendak considers Outside over There his most personal work. "The book is obviously related to my own babyhood when my sister, Natalie, Ida's age, took care of me," he revealed to Jean F. Mercier in Publishers Weekly. The tale has its roots in the real-life story of the kidnapping of famous American pilot Charles Lindbergh's baby in 1932. Sendak recalled in his New York Times Book Review article how at the time he was "4 years old, sick in bed and somehow confusing myself with this baby. I had the superstitious feeling that if he came back I'd be O.K., too. Sadly, we all know the baby didn't come back. It left a peculiar mark in my mind." Outside over There "is really a homage to my sister, who is Ida," the artist later added.

Sendak became a controversial figure with the publication of Where the Wild Things Are, after critics and educators complained that the monsters are too frightening for small children. In the Night Kitchen was also attacked by some reviewers due to its use of cartoon-style illustrations, as well as a picture of Mickey with no clothing on. A more-recently censored book by Sendak is Some Swell Pup; or, Are You Sure You Want a Dog?, a realistic guide to taking care of puppies, which was censored because of an illustration showing a dog defecating. According to Sendak in a New York Times article by Bernard Holland, censoring books that portray some of the facts of life to children is more for the benefit of the adult than the child: "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."

In his new home in Connecticut, Sendak lived in virtual isolation during much of the 1970, enjoying the quiet of his ten-room stone and clapboard house located in a rural part of the state. Working ten to eleven hours a day in a room he converted into a studio, he illustrated picture books for other authors, and completed Outside over There. Sendak now felt that he needed a change from picture books, so, in 1980, he embarked on a new career in theatre.

A fan of classical music since childhood, Sendak had always wanted to get closer to the works of the masters, especially Mozart. Often, while writing and illustrating his books he would listen to Mozart for inspiration, and he consequently memorized many of Mozart's compositions. The image of Mozart has even entered into some of Sendak's illustrations, but this was never enough for the artist. Now he could "illustrate" the music he loved, in three dimensions no less! Designing the sets and costumes for Mozart's The Magic Flute, Sendak went on to create designs for such operas as The Cunning Little Vixen and The Love of Three Oranges as well as stage and film versions of Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker. He also wrote the lyrics and did designs for his own musical based on Where the Wild Things Are and penned a libretto for Higglety, Pigglety, Pop! "That is why the operas are so important," Sendak told Ross, "because by costuming and setting them I have come as close to the music as I ever have in my life. I'm now literally on the stage, and I'm coloring Mozart, illustrating him in the way I used to illustrate people's stories." In 2004 he came even closer, putting aside the visual elements altogether to record a "Yinglish" adaptation of Peter Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf, backed by the Shirim Klezmer Orchestra. Combining Yiddish and English, Sendak's "rumbly voice and humorous inflection of 'Yiddishisms'" creates an "entertaining" interpretation, according to a Publishers Weekly reviewer.

Speaking with Horn Book interviewer David E. White, Sendak explained that with his own theatre productions he hoped to correct what he had always disliked about stage productions geared for young audiences. "There are too many operas called children's operas," he noted. "Most of them suffer for this very reason. They are written down to children, as though children could not appreciate the full weight of good musical quality." In order to have complete freedom in creating the caliber of work he wanted to do for children, in 1990 Sendak and fellow writer Arthur Yorinks co-founded a national children's theater called The Night Kitchen. As artistic director, he intended to produce new versions of plays such as Peter Pan and Hansel and Gretel that will not talk down to children. "Our work is very peculiar, idiosyncratic," Sendak told New York Times contributor Eleanor Blau. "I don't believe in things literally for children. That's a reduction." Believing that children and adults should be treated with equal respect, he added: "Children are more open in their hearts and head[s] for what you're doing.... They're the best audience in town."

While moving into his stage work during the 1980s and 1990s Sendak has continued to illustrate books for other authors, including stories by the Brothers Grimm and Pierre, a tale by Moby-Dick author Herman Melville. In 1993, Sendak brought out a long-awaited author-illustrator title, We Are All in the Dumps with Jack and Guy, "an apocalyptic improvisation on two little-known English nursery rhymes," according to Lanes in the St. James Guide to Children's Writers. Sendak hearkened back to Hector Protector with this title, again creating a fanciful extrapolation of a pair of nursery rhymes. A Kirkus Reviews writer commented that Sendak "penetrates deeply into society's ills in his elaborate visual extension of the words" and commended his "extraordinary art" and his expression of ideas in ways which have "never been more intricate, telling, or playful."

Other illustration projects have included the verse compilation I Saw Esau: The Schoolchild's Pocket Book, and Swine Lake, a tutu'd, tongue-in-cheek romp based on a story by the late children's author James Marshall. A tale of very cultured pigs whose world is invaded by a crass, philistine wolf, the humorous picture book "slyly reveal[s] the infectious pleasures of the performing arts," according to Peter Marks, writing in the New York Times Book Review. Sendak also blended his love of illustration with that of the theater in Brundibar, a collaboration with noted playwright Tony Kushner that is based on a 1942 opera about two siblings who attempt to sing for money to buy milk for their mother and are thwarted by a local bully. While the story ends on an up-note, the history of the opera's original production does not: it was originally performed at a Jewish boy's orphanage during World War II, and followed its cast to the Auschwitz concentration camp where most of the boys were eventually killed. Praising the book as a "stunning piece of art," a Kirkus Reviews writer also noted the "disturbing" qualities of the story, adding that "Sendak's incredible illustrations sprinkle in horrifying historical details" while also referencing some of his earlier art. Noting the collaboration, the reviewer summed up Brundibar as "a heartbreaking, hopeful masterpiece with powerful implications" for modern readers.

Sendak credits part of his ability to communicate with young children with the fact that he retains a vivid sense of what life was like from the viewpoint of a child. By maintaining contact with the young boy that still lives within him, he can easily relate to children, while his adult self is able to touch on subjects and feelings that can stir recognition in adults. "We've all passed the same places," he once noted. "Only I remember the geography, and most people forget it." This desire to maintain a connection with the fantasy world of childhood continues to inspire Sendak creatively. "The writing and the picture-making are merely a means to an end," he commented in Down the Rabbit Hole. "It has never been for me a graphic matter—or even, for that matter, a word matter!," he added "To discuss a children's book in terms of its pictorial beauty—or prose style—is not to the point. It is the particular nugget of magic it achieves—if it achieves. It has always only been a means—a handle with which I can swing myself into—somewhere or other—the place I'd rather be."

Career

Writer and illustrator of children's books, 1951–. All American Comics, part-time artist, c. mid-1940s; Timely Service (window display house), New York, NY, window display artist, 1946; F.A.O. Schwartz, New York, NY, display artist, 1948–51. Co-founder and artistic director, The Night Kitchen (national children's theatre), 1990–. Instructor at Parsons School of Design and Yale University. Set and costume designer for numerous opera productions in the United States and Great Britain, including The Magic Flute, for Houston Grand Opera, 1980; The Cunning Little Vixen, for New York City Opera, 1981; Love for Three Oranges, for Glyndebourne Opera, 1982; The Goose of Cairo, for New York City Opera, c. 1984; Idomeneo, for Los Angeles Opera, 1988; and L'Enfant et les sortilèges and L'Heure Espagnol, both for New York City Opera, 1989; Designer for The Nutcracker: The Motion Picture, 1986. Appeared in "Mon Cher Papa" episode of American Master Series, PBS-TV, 1987. May Hill Arbuthnot Lecturer, 2003. Exhibitions: Sendak's illustrations have been displayed in one-man shows at School of Visual Arts, New York, NY, 1964, Rosenbach Foundation, Philadelphia, PA, 1970 and 1975, Trinity College, Hartford, CT, 1972, Galerie Daniel Keel, Zurich, Switzerland, 1974, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford University, 1975, American Cultural Center, Paris, France, 1978, and Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, NY, 1981.

Member

Authors Guild, Authors League of America.

Awards, Honors

New York Times Best Illustrated Book award, 1952, for A Hole Is to Dig, 1954, for I'll Be You and You Be Me, 1956, for I Want to Paint My Bathroom Blue, 1957, for The Birthday Party, 1958, for What Do You Say, Dear?, 1959, for Father Bear Comes Home, 1960, for Open House for Butterflies, 1962, for The Singing Hill, 1963, for Where the Wild Things Are, 1964, for The Bat-Poet, 1965, for The Animal Family, 1966, for Zlateh the Goat and Other Stories, 1968, for A Kiss for Little Bear, 1969, for The Light Princess, 1970, for In the Night Kitchen, 1973, for The Juniper Tree and Other Tales from Grimm and King Grisly-Beard, 1976, for Fly by Night, 1981, for Outside over There, and 1984, for The Nutcracker; Caldecott Medal runner-up, American Library Association (ALA), 1954, for A Very Special House, 1959, for What Do You Say, Dear?, 1960, for The Moon Jumpers, 1962, for Little Bear's Visit, 1963, for Mr. Rabbit and the Lovely Present, 1971, for In the Night Kitchen, and 1982, for Outside over There; Spring Book Festival honor book, 1956, for Kenny's Window; Caldecott Medal, and Lewis Carroll Shelf award, both 1964, International Board on Books for Young People award, 1966, Art Books for Children awards, 1973, 1974, 1975, Best Young Picture Books Paperback Award, Redbook, 1984, and Children's Choice award, 1985, all for Where the Wild Things Are; Chandler Book Talk Reward of Merit, 1967; Hans Christian Andersen International Medal (first American to receive this award), 1970, for body of illustration work; Art Books for Children award, 1973, 1974, 1975, and Redbook award, 1985, all for In the Night Kitchen; American Book Award nomination, 1980, for Higglety Pigglety Pop!; or, There Must Be More to Life; Boston Globe/Horn Book award, and New York Times Outstanding Book, both 1981, and American Book Award, 1982, all for Outside over There; Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, Association for Library Service to Children, 1983, for lasting contribution to children's literature; National Medal of the Arts, 1997; Astrid Lindgren Memorial Prize (co-recipient), 2003. L.H.D., Boston University, 1977; honorary degrees from University of Southern Mississippi, 1981, and Keene State College, 1986.

Writings

for Children; Self-Illustrated

• Kenny's Window, Harper (New York, NY), 1956, reprinted, 2004.
• Very Far Away, Harper (New York, NY), 1957.
• The Acrobat, privately printed, 1959.
• The Sign on Rosie's Door, Harper (New York, NY), 1960.
• Nutshell Library (verse; contains Chicken Soup with Rice: A Book of Months, One Was Johnny: A Counting Book, Alligators All Around: An Alphabet, and Pierre: A Cautionary Tale), Harper (New York, NY), 1962.
• Where the Wild Things Are, Harper (New York, NY), 1963, 25th anniversary edition, 1988.
• Hector Protector, and As I Went over the Water: Two Nursery Rhymes, Harper (New York, NY), 1965.
• Higglety Pigglety Pop!; or, There Must Be More to Life, Harper (New York, NY), 1967.
• In the Night Kitchen, Harper (New York, NY), 1970.
• Ten Little Rabbits: A Counting Book with Mino the Magician, Philip H. Rosenbach, 1970.
• Pictures by Maurice Sendak, Harper (New York, NY), 1971.
• Maurice Sendak's Really Rosie (based on the television program of the same title; also see below), Harper (New York, NY), 1975.
• (With Matthew Margolis) Some Swell Pup; or, Are You Sure You Want a Dog?, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1976.
• Seven Little Monsters (verse), Harper (New York, NY), 1977.
• Outside over There, Harper (New York, NY), 1981.
• We Are All in the Dumps with Jack and Guy: Two Nursery Rhymes with Pictures, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1993.

illustrator

• M.L. Eidinoff and Hyman Ruchlis, Atomics for the Millions (for adults), McGraw (New York, NY), 1947.
• Robert Garvey, Good Shabbos, Everybody!, United Synagogue Commission on Jewish Education, 1951.
• Marcel Ayme, The Wonderful Farm, Harper (New York, NY), 1951.
• Ruth Krauss, A Hole Is to Dig: A First Book of Definitions, Harper (New York, NY), 1952.
• Ruth Sawyer, Maggie Rose: Her Birthday Christmas, Harper (New York, NY), 1952.
• Beatrice S. de Regniers, The Giant Story, Harper (New York, NY), 1953.
• Meindert De Jong, Hurry Home, Candy, Harper (New York, NY), 1953.
• Meindert De Jong, Shadrach, Harper (New York, NY), 1953.
• Ruth Krauss, A Very Special House, Harper (New York, NY), 1953.
• Hyman Chanover, Happy Hanukkah, Everybody, United Synagogue Commission on Jewish Education, 1954.
• Ruth Krauss, I'll Be You and You Be Me, Harper (New York, NY), 1954.
• Edward Tripp, The Tin Fiddle, Oxford University Press (Oxford, England), 1954.
• Marcel Ayme, Magic Pictures, Harper (New York, NY), 1954.
• Betty MacDonald, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle's Farm, Lippincott (Philadelphia, PA), 1954.
• Meindert De Jong, The Wheel on the School, Harper (New York, NY), 1954.
• Ruth Krauss, Charlotte and the White Horse, Harper (New York, NY), 1955.
• Meindert De Jong, The Little Cow and the Turtle, Harper (New York, NY), 1955.
• Jean Ritchie, Singing Family of the Cumberlands, Oxford University Press (Oxford, England), 1955.
• Beatrice S. de Regniers, What Can You Do with a Shoe?, Harper (New York, NY), 1955, reprinted, Aladdin (New York, NY), 2001.
• Jack Sendak (brother), Happy Rain, Harper (New York, NY), 1956.
• Meindert De Jong, The House of Sixty Fathers, Harper (New York, NY), 1956.
• Ruth Krauss, I Want to Paint My Bathroom Blue, Harper (New York, NY), 1956.
• Ruth Krauss, Birthday Party, Harper (New York, NY), 1957.
• Jack Sendak, Circus Girl, Harper (New York, NY), 1957.
• Ogden Nash, You Can't Get There from Here, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1957.
• Else Minarik, Little Bear, Harper (New York, NY), 1957.
• Meindert De Jong, Along Came a Dog, Harper (New York, NY), 1958.
• Else Minarik, No Fighting, No Biting!, Harper (New York, NY), 1958.
• Ruth Krauss, Somebody Else's Nut Tree, Harper (New York, NY), 1958.
• Sesyle Joslyn, What Do You Say, Dear?: A Book of Manners for All Occasions, W.R. Scott (New York, NY), 1958.
• Else Minarik, Father Bear Comes Home, Harper (New York, NY), 1959.
• Janice Udry, The Moon Jumpers, Harper (New York, NY), 1959.
• Hans Christian Andersen, Seven Tales, Harper (New York, NY), 1959.
• Wilhelm Hauff, Dwarf Long-Nose, Random House (New York, NY), 1960.
• Else Minarik, Little Bear's Friend, Harper (New York, NY), 1960.
• Ruth Krauss, Open House for Butterflies, Harper (New York, NY), 1960.
• Janice Udry, Let's Be Enemies, Harper (New York, NY), 1961.
• Clemens Brentano, The Tale of Gockel, Hinkel, and Gackeliah, Random House (New York, NY), 1961.
• Else Minarik, Little Bear's Visit, Harper (New York, NY), 1961.
• Sesyle Joslyn, What Do You Do, Dear?, Young Scott Books, 1961.
• Clemens Brentano, Schoolmaster Whackwell's Wonderful Sons, Random House (New York, NY), 1962.
• Charlotte Zolotow, Mr. Rabbit and the Lovely Present, Harper (New York, NY), 1962.
• Meindert De Jong, The Singing Hill, Harper (New York, NY), 1962.
• Leo Tolstoy, Nikolenka's Childhood, Harper (New York, NY), 1963.
• Robert Keeshan, She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not, Harper (New York, NY), 1963.
• Randall Jarrell, The Bat-Poet, Collier (New York, NY), 1964.
• Amos Vogel, How Little Lori Visited Times Square, Harper (New York, NY), 1964.
• Jan Wahl, Pleasant Fieldmouse, Harper (New York, NY), 1964.
• William Engvick, editor, Lullabies and Night Songs, Pantheon (New York, NY), 1965.
• Randall Jarrell, The Animal Family, Pantheon (New York, NY), 1965.
• Isaac Bashevis Singer, Zlateh the Goat and Other Stories, Harper (New York, NY), 1966.
• George Macdonald, The Golden Key, Harper (New York, NY), 1967, 2nd edition, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1984.
• William Blake, Poems from William Blake's Songs of Innocence, Bodley Head (London, England), 1967.
• Robert Graves, The Big Green Book, Crowell (New York, NY), 1968.
• Frank Stockton, Griffin and the Minor Canon, Collins (New York, NY), 1968.
• Else Minarik, A Kiss for Little Bear, Harper (New York, NY), 1968.
• George Macdonald, The Light Princess, Bodley Head (London, England), 1969, revised edition, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1969.
• Frank Stockton, The Bee-Man of Orn, Holt (New York, NY), 1971.
• Doris Orgel, Sarah's Room, Bodley Head (London, England), 1971.
• (And selector with Lore Segal) Jakob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm, The Juniper Tree, and Other Tales from Grimm, translated by Segal and Randall Jarrell, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1973, revised edition, 2003.
• Marie Catherine Jumelle de Berneville Aulnoy, Fortunia: A Tale by Mme. D'Aulnoy, translated by Richard Schaubeck, Frank Hallman, 1974.
• Randall Jarrell, Fly by Night, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1976.
• Jakob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm, King Grisly-Beard: A Tale from the Brothers Grimm, Harper (New York, NY), 1978.
• E.T.A. Hoffman, The Nutcracker, translated by Ralph Manheim, Crown (New York, NY), 1984, reprinted, 2001.
• Philip Sendak (father), In Grandpa's House, translated and adapted by Seymour Barofsky, Harper (New York, NY), 1985.
• Dear Mili: An Old Tale by Wilhelm Grimm, based on a letter by Wilhelm Grimm translated by Manheim, Michael Di Capua Books/Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1988, reprinted, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2004.
• (With Garth Williams) Jerome Griswold, The Children's Books of Randall Jarrell, University of Georgia Press (Athens, GA), 1988.
• Lloyd Alexander, and others, The Big Book for Peace, edited by Marilyn Sachs and others, Dutton (New York, NY), 1990.
• Iona Opie, I Saw Esau, Candlewick Press (Cambridge, MA), 1992.
• Marcel Ayme, The Wonderful Farm, translated by Norman Denny, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1994.
• Herman Melville, Pierre, or, The Ambiguities, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1995.
• Arthur Yorinks, The Miami Giant, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1995.
• Heinrich von Kleist, Penthesilea: A Tragic Drama, translated and introduced by Joel Agee, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1998.
• James Marshall, Swine Lake, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1999.
• Else Minarik, Present from Little Bear, edited by Mark McVeigh, Harper Festival (New York, NY), 2002.
• Else Minarik, Little Bear and the Missing Pie, edited by Mark McVeigh, Harper Festival (New York, NY), 2002.
• Else Minarik, Little Bear's Egg, edited by Mark McVeigh, Harper Festival (New York, NY), 2002.
• Else Minarik, Little Bear's Flying Flapjack, edited by Mark McVeigh, Harper Festival (New York, NY), 2002.
• Else Minarik, Little Bear's Wagon, edited by Mark McVeigh, Harper Festival (New York, NY), 2002.
• Tony Kushner, Brundibar, Hyperion (New York, NY), 2003.
• Ruth Krauss, Bears, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2005.
• Also illustrator of Little Stories by Gladys B. Bond, Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith.

other

• Fantasy Sketches (exhibition catalogue), Philip H. Rosenbach, 1970.
• (Editor and author of introduction) Maxfield Parrish Poster Book, Crown (New York, NY), 1974.
• (Author of appreciation) The Publishing Archive of Lothar Meggendorfer, Schiller, 1975.
• (And director and lyricist) Really Rosie, Starring the Nutshell Kids (script for animated television special; based on characters from The Nutshell Library and The Sign on Rosie's Door; broadcast on Columbia Broadcasting System, 1975; also see below), music composed and performed by Carol King, Harper (New York, NY), 1975.
• (Editor) The Disney Poster Book, illustrated by Walt Disney Studios, Harper (New York, NY), 1977.
• (Lyricist and set designer) Really Rosie (musical play; revised from the television special of the same title), music by Carol King, produced in London and Washington, DC, 1978, produced off-Broadway, 1980.
• (Lyricist and set and costume designer) Where the Wild Things Are (opera; based on his book of the same title), music by Oliver Knussen, produced in Belgium, 1980, produced at New York, NY, 1984.
• (Author of introduction) Jean de Brunhoff, Babar's Anniversary Album, Random House (New York, NY), 1981.
• Collection of Books, Posters and Original Drawings, Schiller, 1984.
• (With Frank Corsaro) The Love for Three Oranges: The Glyndebourne Version (dialogue), Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1984.
• (Librettist and set and costume designer) Higglety, Pigglety, Pop! (opera), produced in England, 1984.
• (Author of commentary) Jonathan Cott, editor, Master-works of Children's Literature, Volume 7, Chelsea House, 1984.
• (Photographer) Rudolf Tesnohlidek, The Cunning Little Vixen, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1985.
• (Author of introduction) Jonathan Cott, Victorian Color Picture Books, Stonehill Publishing/Chelsea House, 1985.
• Posters, Harmony Books (New York, NY), 1986.
• (Author of foreword) John Canemaker, Winsor McCay: His Life and Art, Abbeville Press (New York, NY), 1987.
• Caldecott & Co.: Notes on Books & Pictures, Michael Di Capua Books/Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1988.
• (Author of introduction) Mickey Mouse Movie Stories, Abrams (New York, NY), 1988.
• Maurice Sendak Book and Poster Package: Wild Things, Harper (New York, NY), 1991.
• (Set and costume designer) Frank and Joey Go to Work, Harper Festival (New York, NY), 1996.
• (Author of narration; with the Shirim Klezmer Orchestra) Pincus and the Pig: A Klezmer Tale (CD-ROM), Tzakik, 2004.
• Contributor of illustrations to McCall's and Ladies' Home Journal. Contributor to Worlds of Childhood: The Art and Craft of Writing for Children, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1998.
• Sendak's books have been translated into numerous languages.
• Sendak's manuscripts are collected at the Museum of the Philip H. and A.S.W. Rosenbach Foundation, Philadelphia, PA, and the Kerlan Collection, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

Adaptations

Film strips with cassettes have been produced by Weston Woods of Where the Wild Things Are, 1968, and Pierre, Chicken Soup with Rice, Alligators All Around, and One Was Johnny, all 1976. Where the Wild Things Are was recorded on cassette by Caedmon, 1988, and was adapted as an animated film, directed by Spike Jonze. In the Night Kitchen was adapted for film, Weston Woods, 1988, and as a talking book. The "Little Bear" books were the basis of an animated TV series. Higglety Pigglety Pop! was adapted as a Braille book and a record by Caedmon; Sendak's characters have inspired toy dolls and retellings including Maurice Sendak's Seven Little Monsters, by Arthur Yorinks, Hyperion, 2003.

Biographical and Critical Sources

books

• Arbuthnot, May Hill, and Zena Sutherland, Children and Books, 4th edition, Scott, Foresman (Glenview, IL), 1972.
• Bader, Barbara, American Picturebooks from Noah's Ark to the Beast Within, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1976, pp. 495-524.
• Bowman, John S., editor, The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, England), 1995.
• Carpenter, Humphrey, and Mari Prichard, The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature, Oxford University Press (Oxford, England), 1984.
• Chevalier, Tracy, editor, Twentieth-Century Children's Writers, fifth edition edited by Sara Pendergast and Tom Pendergast, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1999.
• Children's Literature: Annual of the Modern Language Association Seminar on Children's Literature and the Children's Literature Association, Volume 6, 1977, pp. 130-140; Volume 10, 1982, pp. 178-182; Volume 12, 1984, pp. 3-24; Volume 13, 1985, pp. 139-153; Volume 28, 2000, pp. 132-147.
• Children's Literature Review, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 1, 1976, Volume 17, 1989.
• Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 61: American Writers for Children since 1960: Poets, Illustrators, and Nonfiction Authors, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1987, pp. 258-272.
• Encyclopedia of World Biography, second edition supplement, Volume 19, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 2000.
• Georgiou, Constantine, Children and Their Literature, Prentice-Hall (New York, NY), 1969.
• Hart, James D., The Oxford Companion to American Literature, sixth edition, Oxford University Press (Oxford, England), 1995.
• Heller, Steven, editor, Innovators of American Illustration, Van Nostrand (New York, NY), 1986, pp. 70-81.
• Hopkins, Lee Bennett, Books Are by People, Citation Press (New York, NY), 1969.
• Kingman, Lee, editor, Newbery and Caldecott Medal Books: 1956–1965, Horn Book (Boston, MA), 1965.
• Kushner, Tony, The Art of Maurice Sendak: 1980 to the Present, Harry N. Abrams (New York, NY), 2003.
• Lacy, Lyn Ellen, Art and Design in Children's Picture Books: An Analysis of Caldecott Award-winning Illustrations, American Library Association, 1986, pp. 104-143.
• Lanes, Selma G., The Art of Maurice Sendak, H. Abrams (New York, NY), 1980.
• Lanes, Selma G., Down the Rabbit Hole: Adventures and Misadventures in the Realm of Children's Literature, Atheneum (New York, NY), 1971, pp. 67-78.
• Sendak, Maurice, We Are All in the Dumps with Jack and Guy, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1993.
• Shaw, John Mackay, Childhood in Poetry, third supplement, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1980.
• Silvey, Anita, editor, Children's Books and Their Creators, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1995.
• Smith, Jeffrey Jon, A Conversation with Maurice Sendak, Smith (Elmhurst, IL), 1974.
• Townsend, John Rowe, Written for Children: An Outline of English Language Children's Literature, revised edition, Lippincott (Philadelphia, PA), 1974, p. 310.
• Ward, Martha, and others, Authors of Books for Young People, Scarecrow Press (Metuchen, NJ), 1990.
• West, Mark I., Trust Your Children: Writers against Censorship in Children's Literature, Neal-Schuman (New York, NY), 1988, pp. 87-91.
• Zipes, Jak, editor, The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales, Oxford University Press (Oxford, England), 2000.

periodicals

• Appraisal, spring-summer, 1984, pp. 4-9.
• Booklist, October 15, 1988, p. 347; December 15, 1988, p. 724; January 15, 1991, p. 1019; September 15, 1993, Carolyn Phelan, "Down and up with Jack," p. 156; May 1, 1997, p. 1507; July, 1998, p. 1889; May 1, 1999, Ilene Cooper, review of Swine Lake, p. 1590.
• Books and Bookmen, June, 1969; December, 1974, pp. 74-75.
• Chicago Tribune, July 17, 1980; January 29, 1990, Martha Shirk, "Relatively Monstrous: Maurice Sendak Says Nightmarish Kin Inspired His Famous 'Wild Things.'"
• Chicago Tribune Book World, May 3, 1981.
• Children's Book Review, June, 1971, p. 84.
• Children's Literature (annual), 2004, Aparna Gollapudi, "Unraveling the Invisible Seam: Text and Image in Maurice Sendak's Higglety Pigglety Pop!," pp. 112-133.
• Children's Literature Association Quarterly, fall, 1985, pp. 122-127.
• Children's Literature in Education, November, 1971, p. 48; spring, 1982, Eric A. Kimmel, "Children's Literature without Children," pp. 38-43; spring, 1982, pp. 38-43; summer, 1988, pp. 86-93.
• Elementary English, February, 1971, Shelton L. Root, Jr., review of In the Night Kitchen, pp. 262-263; November, 1971, pp. 825-832, 856-864.
• Entertainment Weekly, December 12, 2003, Troy Patterson, "Where the Wild King Is: Crowing a Career of Turning His Childhood Nightmares into Dreamy Kids' Books," p. 48.
• Horn Book, December, 1970, Mary Agnes Taylor, "In Defense of the Wild Things," pp. 642-646; December, 1970, pp. 642-646; October, 1976, p. 495; June, 1977, p. 303; April, 1980, David E. White, "A Conversation with Maurice Sendak," pp. 145-155; August, 1983, pp. 474-477; May-June, 1986, pp. 305-313; May-June, 1987; March-April, 1989, p. 232; January-February, 1994, p. 92; March-April, 1997, p. 187; July, 1999, review of Swine Lake, p. 457; November-December, 2003, Gregory Maguire, "A Sendak Appreciation," p. 667, and Brian Anderson, "A View from the Island: Sendak in England," p. 717.
• Junior Bookshelf, April, 1966, pp. 103-111; February, 1968, p. 30; August, 1970, pp. 205-206; June, 1971, C. Martin, review of In the Night Kitchen, pp. 165-166.
• Kirkus Reviews, October 1, 1960, review of The Sign on Rosie's Door, p. 867; August 15, 1993, review of We Are All in the Dumps with Jack and Guy, p. 1080; November 1, 2003, review of Brundibar, p. 1312.
• Ladies' Home Journal, March, 1969, Bruno Bettelheim, "The Care and Feeding of Monsters," p. 48.
• Los Angeles Times, February 6, 1981; December 10, 1982; July 15, 1990, p. 14; October 3, 1993, p. 1.
• National Observer, November 27, 1967.
• Newsweek, May 18, 1981.
• New Yorker, January 22, 1966.
• New York Times, November 1, 1967; December 9, 1970; January 5, 1973, Lisa Hammel, "Maurice Sendak: Thriving on Quiet"; October 12, 1980, John Lahr, "The Playful Art of Maurice Sendak"; October 15, 1980; April 11, 1981; June 1, 1981; November 30, 1981; October 24, 1985; November 8, 1987, Bernard Holland, "The Paternal Pride of Maurice Sendak"; October 25, 1990, Eleanor Blau, "Sendak Is Forming Company for National Children's Theater."
• New York Times Book Review, October 16, 1960, Alice Low, "Pretending," p. 40; October 22, 1967; November 1, 1970; February 29, 1976, p. 26; April 29, 1979; April 26, 1981, pp. 49, 64-65; October 9, 1983; May 17, 1987, Maurice Sendak, "Where the Wild Things Began"; November 14, 1993, Brian Alderson, "Children Who Live in Boxes," p. 17; November 16, 1997, p. 26; May 16, 1999, Peter Marks, "Pigs on Point."
• New York Times Magazine, June 7, 1970.
• Parabola, fall, 1981, pp. 88-91.
• People, December 2, 1985, pp. 215-216; December 15, 2993, Mary Green, "Talk on the Wild Side," p. 115.
• Publishers Weekly, April 10, 1981, Jean F. Mercier, "Sendak on Sendak," pp. 45-46; May 3, 1999, review of Swine Lake, p. 74; October 27, 2003, Sally Lodge, "Brundibar: A Collaboration with Remarkable Roots," p. 26; January 10, 2005, review of Pincus and the Pig, p. 25.
• Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress, Volume 28, number 4, 1971.
• Rolling Stone, December 30, 1976.
• Saturday Review, December 14, 1963.
• School Library Journal, December, 1970; May, 1976, p. 54; September, 1985, p. 43; August, 1986, p. 22; August, 1988, p. 46; October, 1993, Kay E. Vandergrift, review of We Are All in the Dumps with Jack and Guy, p. 120; May, 1997, p. 154; July, 1999, Julie Cummins, review of Swine Lake, p. 77.
• Signal, September, 1986, pp. 172-187.
• Theatre Crafts, April, 1984, Ellenn Levene, "Illustrators Edward Gorey and Maurice Sendak Have New Careers as Scenic Artists," pp. 43-45, 75-78.
• Time, July 6, 1981; July 28, 1986, p. 50.
• Times Educational Supplement, May 19, 2000, Ted Dewan, review of Swine Lake, p. FRI23.
• Times Literary Supplement, July 2, 1971; March 27, 1981.
• Top of the News, June, 1970, pp. 366-369.
• TV Guide, November 11, 1978.
• Washington Post, November 1, 1978; November 20, 1981.
• Washington Post Book World, May 10, 1981, Jonathan Cott, "When Ida Blew Her Magic Horn," pp. 1-2.

other

• The Lively Art of Picture Books (film), c. 1965.
• Maurice Sendak (film), Weston Woods, 1986.

Quotes:

"There must be more to life than having everything."

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