"Where someone loved him best of all..."

Maurice Sendak, 1928-2012

My colleague Patrick stuck his head in the door early this week to tell me he had just learned that Maurice Sendak had died.  I was overcome with such a sense of loss. In fact, I wandered aimlessly around the library for the next fifteen minutes, sad, reminiscing.  Sendak was one of my favorite authors before I knew the word author.  My younger sisters and I shared his Nutshell Library from earliest childhood and can still recite most of Pierre, Chicken Soup with Rice, Alligators All Around and Once Was Johnny.  We acted them out. We poured syrup on our hair. I hit them with the folding chair. (Really.)

I vividly remember my mother's discovery of Higglety Pigglety Pop: Or, There Must Be More To Life and quoting it to us in veiled but unmistakably hostile grievance.  I think it encapsulated her own sense of entrapment and dissatisfaction in that early era of the women's movement far better than anything written by Betty Friedan or Germaine Greer.

I also remember reading Outside Over There, Mickey In the Night Kitchen and Where The Wild Things Are to my sons when they were young. It was truly mind-blowing, disturbing stuff to me. I had just finished an M.A. in English Lit and here were nightmare visions equivalent to Kafka: encompassing coded images of parental sexual activity, the Holocaust, an orgy and death, death, death. And then forgiveness and nurturing and love: Max returns to the world of language and to his lovingly-provided dinner: "And it was still hot."

I teach Where the Wild Things Are to 11-12 year olds on occasion, explaining Freudian terms, consequences of transgressive behavior, private fantasy, aggression, word vs. image, child vs. mother, and far more.   There is a reason it ranks first in every librarians' poll of greatest picture books. Sendak respected kids enough to address both their nightmares and their joys in being alive.  As these students exclaim to me, "I loved that book when I was little.  We read it all the time. But I had no idea why I loved it -- and now I do!"

As the tributes to Sendak poured in this week, I was moved to tears by one in the New York Times about a 15 year old girl, sitting in the police station, who had been sexually abused. Like so many children in utterly different circumstances, she too found comfort in Where the Wild Things Are.   My colleague Anna sent me this letter to Sendak, among his favorites:

“Dear Mr. Sendak,” read one, from an 8-year-old boy. “How much does it cost to get to where the wild things are? If it is not expensive, my sister and I would like to spend the summer there.”

Some recent interviews are below. I would love to hear other memories (comment link, below).  I will miss him.

Interview with Stephen Colbert, part 1 (7 min)
Interview with Stephen Colbert, part 2 (7 min)
Interview with Terry Gross audio (hour)