Years of reading “Where the Wild Things Are” over and over and over again.

I was so sad to hear that he died. When I was little, I loved reading Where the Wild Things Are and watching Little Bear in the morning! I learned a great deal from both the book and that show, and I will look fondly upon the many memories that I have of them. He will certainly be missed by many!

I cannot fathom proper childhood picture book reading without the illustrations
in Little Bear.

Here’s a transcript from a NPR interview:

Terry Gross: Can you share some of your favorite comments from readers that you’ve gotten over the years?

Maurice Sendak: Oh, there’s so many. Can I give you just one that I really like? It was from a little boy. He sent me a charming card with a little drawing. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters – sometimes very hastily – but this one I lingered over. I sent him a post card and I drew him a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, “Dear Jim, I loved your card.” Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, “Jim loved your card so much he ate it.” That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.

I loved reading In the Night Kitchen to my boys. I love the rhymes, the story, the illustrations, every single thing about that book. The monsters in Where the Wild Things Are always freaked me out so I didn’t read it much to my kids, but we adored some Chicken Soup with Rice. I heard the most awesome interview on NPR yesterday with Gregory Maguire (who wrote Wicked), he was a personal friend of Mr. Sendak and spoke of him with much love and admiration. He got choked up at the end of the piece and I teared up myself. It was beautiful.

@SuperMouse I completely forgot about In the Night Kitchen! I absolutely loved that book, and I think we still have it!

The thing I cherish most is having been able to see Maurice Sendalk’s original drawings and paintings at the Jewish Museum in 2005. As beautiful and as artistically as the drawings in the books are reproduced they cannot compare to the originals. It was pure joy to see these works and I hope they will bring back another exhibit in honor of his passing. Another great thing about the exhibit was the explanations of his thinking and his inspiration. For example, it explained how Sendak was frightened of his uncles from the “old country”, that is, Eastern Europe, and his drawings of the monsters in Where the Wild Things Are was inspired by them. Some of his work has a dark side that many people are not aware of. He was great in a way that few artists are. He was true to himself and by being so, he gave us all a priceless gift. May he rest in peace! Here is a link to the exhibit I saw. If the descriptions won’t load (I had problems with them loading) just refresh your screen and they should work. It’s worth reading because it gives you insights into what his work was about.

I also saw his last interview with Stephen Colbert This is the uncensored tribute..

Thanks guys.

@Earthgirl great links!!!

Loved Night Kitchen and my middle school students did a Reader’s Theater version of Wild Things that they developed themselves… still can see those kids pretending to be monsters :D

I don’t know that it’s a cherished memory, but my summer camp improv class was told to pick a monster from Where The Wild Things Are and be that monster for x amount of time. Thought of that just now…

Love his artwork, and still buy Ruth Krauss’ A Hole Is To Dig for younger family members. This book was one of Sendak’s earliest published works, I think.