RIP Maurice Sendak

[KingOrfeo]

Story:

Maurice Sendak, widely considered the most important children’s book artist of the 20th century, who wrenched the picture book out of the safe, sanitized world of the nursery and plunged it into the dark, terrifying and hauntingly beautiful recesses of the human psyche, died on Tuesday in Danbury, Conn. He was 83.

The cause was complications of a recent stroke, said Michael di Capua, his longtime editor. Mr. Sendak, who died at Danbury Hospital, lived nearby in Ridgefield, Conn.

Roundly praised, intermittently censored and occasionally eaten, Mr. Sendak’s books were essential ingredients of childhood for the generation born after 1960 or thereabouts, and in turn for their children. He was known in particular for more than a dozen picture books he wrote and illustrated himself, most famously “Where the Wild Things Are,” which was simultaneously genre-breaking and career-making when it was published by Harper & Row in 1963.

Among the other titles he wrote and illustrated, all from Harper & Row, are “In the Night Kitchen” (1970) and “Outside Over There” (1981), which together with “Where the Wild Things Are” form a trilogy; “The Sign on Rosie’s Door” (1960); “Higglety Pigglety Pop!” (1967); and “The Nutshell Library” (1962), a boxed set of four tiny volumes comprising “Alligators All Around,” “Chicken Soup With Rice,” “One Was Johnny” and “Pierre.”

Oh, please don't go! We'll eat you up! We love you so!

 

[pointless]

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-co...grim-colberty-tales-with-maurice-sendak-pt--1

 

[evesdream]

http://www.blackbirdprints.com/images/illustration_drawings/ill_resource/maurice_sendak.gif

 

[bluemuse]

sadness

 

[KingOrfeo]

A few years ago I visited the Tampa Museum of Art (the old one) and there was a special exhibit of Sendak's illustrations for the book of a play called Brundibar (means "Bumblebee"), which was produced during WWII, by semi-protected Jews in the Theresienstadt concentration camp, who knew very well that they would die for it, the play's eponymous villain-bully being a thinly-veiled parody of Hitler. Sendak himself was a New-York-born Jew, but he lost a lot of relatives in the Holocaust.

 

[KingOrfeo]

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-co...grim-colberty-tales-with-maurice-sendak-pt--1

Ah, yes. He said of the "children's" book Stephen had just written -- I Am a Pole (And So Can You!) -- "The sad thing is, I like it!" Which Stephen made the cover blurb.

And, today, Stephen gives props to Maurice.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Stephen Colbert gives us mo' Maurice!

 

[phrodeau]

It might stretch your screen, but I don't care.

http://i.imgur.com/FD9oJ.jpg

 

[KingOrfeo]

It might stretch your screen, but I don't care.

http://i.imgur.com/FD9oJ.jpg

I don't care, because I see nothing but a white square with a red "x".

 

[neci]

 

[pointless]

I don't care, because I see nothing but a white square with a red "x".

403 forbidden

 

[richard_daily]

Sad fucking shit.

Dr Suess and Mr. Sendak wrote the first books that I read on my own, and the fact that I can still read them and enjoy them, is a testament to their greatness (or maybe it just says something about me).

 

[CandiCame]

I loved this guy...

He was one of the few people who broke all barriers.

There are people out there who are all, "Fuck the fags! Well... I love 'Where the Wild Things Are' though. Read it to my kids."

He was one of those people who was like, that perfect artist, seen not for who he was but for his art. He's an inspiration. He'll be remembered and loved for the rest of humankind. Impersonal- he did it, he did that thing that all artists want where they relate to everyone, regardless of the personal background of the audience. He's... amazing.

 

[phrodeau]

403 forbidden

Damn.

Click here, then.

 

[CandiCame]

Damn.

Click here, then.

Same deal.

 

[phrodeau]

Right-click and open in new window, it works for me.

 

[pointless]

nope. you're fucked, dude.

 

[glynndah]

Right-click and open in new window, it works for me.

You must be special because it doesn't work for me.

 

[pointless]

he's got it in his cache. we don't. i'd say just shrink it and attach it, but at this point it'd just be a let down.