Missing Page type: KR - Artikelsida

Maurice Sendak was born in the same year as Mickey Mouse, his childhood hero. He liked all the Disney films and cartoons, but Mickey Mouse best of all.

Born to Polish Jewish parents in New York in 1928, he felt that Mickey Mouse represented everything that he wanted to be: he was happy, he looked good, and he was at home in Hollywood, the dream land where every Jewish boy in Brooklyn wanted to be.

Maurice Sendak himself thought he was a dreadful child. He couldn't make friends, couldn't skate, and he wasn't good at any ball games. All he did was to sit at home drawing, having started to produce picture books that he drew and bound himself at the age of six.

Today Maurice Sendak is one of the best known and best loved illustrators in the world. He has won countless awards and admirers for his work. His most famous book is Where The Wild Things Are, which has been read by small children all over the world. But his route to fame was not an easy one.

He hated school from his first day there. He didn't like to compete against others or being in large groups, and he didn't think school allowed him to develop as he wanted to. Yet at high school he met an art teacher who encouraged him and made him like school a little better.
When he left school he got a series of jobs, including making dummies for shop window displays and painting the backgrounds for cartoons that other people had drawn. Only in the evenings was he free to draw and paint as he wanted.

When he first started to illustrate children's books that either he or other people had written the stories for, many people thought his pictures were strange and that his children looked ugly and distorted, as if they'd been hit hard over the head.

He responded by saying that he draws children in the way that they perceive themselves. "Or rather as I think they perceive themselves. It's the way I felt when I was small. Far too many parents and writers have no respect for the fact that children understand and suffer a great deal. My own children exhibit a great degree of joy, but they're also defenceless. Defencelessness is the primary attribute of childhood."

Many of Sendak's books have been translated into other languages, and his picture books can be read with pleasure by small children, young people and adults alike.

A selection of books by Maurice Sendak

Where The Wild Things Are

This is one of the world's most famous modern picture books, loved by children the world over. The book is about Max, who's so contrary that his mother sends him off to bed without any supper.
A forest then starts to grow in Max's room, and he travels to the land where the wild things are, snarling and gnashing their terrible teeth. They grow and grow until they fill entire pages, but Max manages to tame them because he's the wildest of them all. And even though they're monsters, they do have a rather friendly look about them.
Finally, all ends happily, as is usually the case in picture books.

Pierre: A Cautionary Tale in Five Chapters and a Prologue

This is one of the first books that Maurice Sendak wrote and illustrated himself. The pictures are unlike his later work, but the main character, Pierre, is as independent and stubborn as most of the children in his other picture books. "I don't care" he says about everything, and doesn't change his mind until he gets eaten by a lion!
A harsh and humorous story about a very contrary boy.

Dear Mili

Dear Mili is a fairytale by the Brothers Grimm which was discovered in the late 1980s and which had never been previously published, despite being written more than 100 year earlier. It's about a little girl whose mother tells her to hide in the forest to escape from the war that's about to break out. There she meets an old man, Saint Joseph, who helps her. She also meets her guardian angel.
It's quite a sad story. Sendak has created some fantastic illustrations, full of detail, in which you can also find references to modern wars and life today. To begin with he had a problem drawing Joseph, one that he solved by basing him on the image of his own father.
A book to look through carefully, in which you can discover all kinds of exciting things in the pictures.