Roger Sutton
Editor in Chief

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The post From the Editor – June 2012 appeared first on The Horn Book.

In this special issue of Notes from the Horn Book we celebrate the June 10^th birthday of Maurice Sendak, who died last month at the age of eighty-three. As well as being a master of illustration, Sendak was a great friend to The Horn Book. While he was best known for his picture books, we take the opportunity here to showcase the broad reach of his art.

Two questions for four fellows
Picture books
Easy readers
Chapter books and intermediate
Folklore
Music
From the Editor

Books in this issue

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Easy readers
A Hole Is to Dig (1952) written by Ruth Krauss, illus. by Maurice Sendak, Harper, 5–8 years.
Little Bear (1957) by Else Holmelund Minarik, illustrated by Maurice Sendak, Harper, 5–8 years.
Nutshell Library (1962) written and illus. by Maurice Sendak, Harper, 5–8 years.

Chapter books and intermediate
Higglety Pigglety Pop! or There Must Be More to Life (1967) written and illus. by Maurice Sendak, Harper, 7–10 years.
The Animal Family (1965) written by Randall Jarrell, illus. by Maurice Sendak, Pantheon, 7–10 years.
The Wheel on the School (1954) written by Meindert DeJong, illus. by Maurice Sendak, Harper, 9–12 years.

Folklore
The Juniper Tree and Other Tales from Grimm (1973), selected by Lore Segal and Maurice Sendak, illus. by Maurice Sendak, Farrar, 7–10 years.
I Saw Esau: The Schoolchild’s Pocket Book (new edition, 1992) edited by Iona and Peter Opie, illus. by Maurice Sendak, Candlewick, 5–8 years.
We Are All in the Dumps with Jack and Guy (1993) written and illus. by Maurice Sendak, di Capua/HarperCollins, 5–8 years.

Music
Brundibar (2003) retold by Tony Kushner, illus. by Maurice Sendak, after the opera by Hans Krása and Adolf Hoffmeister, di Capua/Hyperion, 5–8 years.
Lullabies and Night Songs (1966) edited by William Engvick, with music by Alec Wilder, illus. by Maurice Sendak, Harper, 3–7 years.
The Nutcracker (1984) written by E. T. A. Hoffmann, translated by Ralph Manheim, illus. by Maurice Sendak, Crown, 5–8 years.

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The Tony Kushner/Sendak collaboration Brundibar (2003) re-creates the story line of a Czech opera written by a Terezin concentration camp inmate and performed there by children whom the Nazis later murdered. It will be read on at least two different levels: adults will recognize the yellow stars sewn on the Jewish characters’ clothing and other ominous details while young listeners will want to know what happens next to the two little heroes, Pepicek and Aninku, who set out with an empty bucket to fetch milk for their ailing mother. Sendak’s crayon, colored-pencil, and brush pen illustrations feature rosy tones emphasized by bursts of crimson and yellow, or contrasted with intense blacks, browns, blues, and greens. Characters in nonstop action fill the pages, but there’s plenty of vivid white space to absorb them. (5–8 years)

Lullabies and Night Songs (1965), edited by William Engvick, with music by Alec Wilder, and illustrated by Sendak, is an extraordinary songbook, wholly enchanting in words, music, and illustrations. The editor has selected verses, in addition to some of his own, from poets notable and varied as well as many traditional pieces. The pictures – in muted yet luminous colors – are instantly engaging: by turns robust and delicate, mischievous and droll, tender and vigorous. The manuscript notation and the hand-lettered text contribute to the artistic whole. (3–7 years)

The mysterious, powerful, and slightly grotesque flavor of E. T. A. Hoffmann’s original Nutcracker is re-created through Ralph Manheim’s smooth, elegant translation (1984). The illustrations, spectacular and remarkably effective, are either taken from Sendak’s stage settings for the ballet or are newly drawn for this volume. Many of them show clearer and more pristine color and have a greater delicacy and lightness of line than do most of Sendak’s drawings (though there is an unmistakable, enormous Wild Thing peering from behind an island). Altogether a magnificent, splendid combination of talents — the author and the illustrator each worthy of the other. (5–8 years)

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The Juniper Tree and Other Tales from Grimm (1973), selected by Lore Segal and Maurice Sendak, translated by Segal and Randall Jarrell, and illustrated by Sendak, features Grimm favorites including “Rapunzel,” “Hansel and Gretel,” and “Snow-White and the Seven Dwarfs.” In his meticulous drawings, Sendak ranges far and wide for methods of suggesting the imaginative depths inherent in the tales. There is a quiet intensity in the illustrations, each of which seems to have its own aura. Originally published as a slipcased two-volume set, then in paperback in 1976 as a joint volume, the book was reissued in 2003 in a handsome hardcover edition. (7–10 years)

Generously embellished with illustrations from full-page compositions to vignettes illuminating individual verses, this newly edited reissue of 1947’s I Saw Esau: The Schoolchild’s Pocket Book (1992) edited by Iona and Peter Opie, is certainly an event. The Opies’ rhymes belong to the hidden culture of childhood, chants learned in the schoolyard or on the street and never sanctioned by adult approval. In Sendak’s illustrations, the characters seem more like miniaturized streetwise adults than children — or perhaps they are reminders that the conventional images of childhood are far too idealized. (5–8 years)

In We Are All in the Dumps with Jack and Guy (1993), a passionate plea for social responsibility set to the text of two little-known nursery rhymes, Sendak created some of his most gripping and powerful images. In a setting of a dump, where homeless urchins live in shacks and cardboard boxes, two terrify rats steal a child and all the kittens in the area. Jack and Guy are challenged to play cards for “the kittens and the poor little kid,” but the rats hold the trump card. The double-page spreads with large images right at the surface pull us into the action and bombard us with emotion. Though readers will be alternately moved and repelled, this book should be studied and discussed. (5–8 years)

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Sendak’s daring imagination weaves a simple rhyme into the complex and brilliantly original tale Higglety Pigglety Pop! Or, There Must Be More to Life (1967).Sealyham terrier Jennie, convinced that “there must be more to life than having everything,” packs her bag and confidently goes forth into the world. The fantasy is ordered and controlled, full of allusion, wisdom, and flashes of wit. The story is enormously extended by the pictures, each one a masterpiece of impeccable drawing, restraint, and emotional depth. (7–10 years)

At the start of the 1966 Newbery Honor Book The Animal Family (1965), written by Randall Jarrell and illustrated by Sendak, the Hunter lives alone in his log house. In time the mermaid comes to live with him; then he brings home a bear cub and a lynx kitten. The lynx finds a little boy whom the sea had cast ashore, and the family is complete. In so simple a thread of story, but in singing words, is caught the essence of family. Harmonious landscape drawings are a tribute to the sensitivity of the artist; they decorate and set a mood without trying to illustrate a story so universal in its emotion, yet so personal in its meaning. (7–10 years)

Sendak illustrated several novels by Meindert DeJong, among them the Newbery-winning The Wheel on the School (1954). The setting is the Dutch village of Shora, a place that’s always passed over when storks come to nest in neighboring villages. Young Lina and her classmates wonder why the storks (which bring good luck) don’t come to Shora — and as they wonder, things begin to happen. As always in this collaboration between masters, simple, atmospheric pictures add greatly to the mood of the book. (9–12 years)

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Entirely original in approach and content is Ruth Krauss’s A Hole Is to Dig (1952), illustrated by Sendak. In this “first book of first definitions,” Krauss, with the help of children themselves, gives us such gems as “a seashell is to hear the sea” and “cats are so you can have kittens.” The illustrations are perfect whether they are making it clear that “buttons are to keep people warm,” or picturing the boy who feels he has thought of an excruciatingly funny definition: “A tablespoon is to eat a table with.” This can start children off on a fascinating game. (5–8 years)

Little Bear (1957) by Else Holmelund Minarik, illustrated by Sendak, was the first in publisher Harper’s legendary “I Can Read” series. Minarik and Sendak would go on to create four more books about Little Bear. Distinctive features include the imaginative quality of the story’s simple text, which divorces it from the feeling of controlled vocabulary, and the charm of its quaintly humorous drawings. Little Bear contains four play adventures, each in harmony with the instincts and interests of the young child. Mother Bear, in her full-flowing gown, conveys warmth and tenderness just as Little Bear has the playfulness, eagerness, and wistfulness of a child himself. (5–8 years)

Sendak’s Nutshell Library (1962) includes four tiny books in a box, each complete in itself with droll jacket, hard cover, and humorous pictures and funny text. One Was Johnny is a counting book in rhyme; Alligators All Around is a complete and original alphabet book; Chicken Soup with Rice has a lively nonsense rhyme for every month (each involving chicken soup); and “cautionary tale” Pierre is “a story with a moral air about Pierre, who learned to care.” (5–8 years)

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Where the Wild Things Are (1963), Sendak’s best-known work and the 1964 Caldecott Medal Winner, has proved utterly engrossing to children throughout the decades. As well as the pictorial grotesqueries — both deliciously monstrous and humorous — they love the idea of a small boy, punished for his naughty “wildness,” dreaming up hideous wild things, taming them, and then becoming their king, before returning home to find his supper, still hot, waiting for him. This vibrant picture book in understated full color is a sincere, perceptive contribution to literature and bears repeated examination. (3–7 years)

The star of the 1971 Caldecott Honor Book In the Night Kitchen (1970), young Mickey falls “through the dark, out of his clothes . . . into the Night Kitchen.” Mixed into cake batter, he escapes in an airplane of dough and dives into a gigantic milk bottle — then is able to supply the cake bakers with the ingredient they need (milk). Line drawings of juxtaposed geometric forms are washed with subtly darkened tones of delicate color, and the bold whites and yellows add an element of luminosity to the eerie setting, a city transformed by night. (3–7 years)

In the 1982 Caldecott Honor Book Outside Over There (1981), goblins kidnap Ida’s baby sister, leaving a changeling made of ice. In hot pursuit, Ida hears “her Sailor Papa’s song” telling her to “catch those goblins with a tune.” The story is haunting and evocative; the art, with echoes of Sendak’s previous work, mature and masterly. The setting of the book is eighteenth-century pastoral — appropriate for a story that reverberates with overtones of Grimm, Mozart, and German romantic poetry. (3–7 years)

In addition to his authored work, Sendak was a generous picture-book collaborator, nowhere better demonstrated than in the 1963 Caldecott Honor Book Mr. Rabbit and the Lovely Present (1962), written by Charlotte Zolotow and illustrated by Sendak. The story has the quality of a realistic dream, wandering through scenes that change in tone from bright daylight with accents of cherry red through the blue of a starry moonlit night. The book is drenched in atmosphere, with glowing colors and lively depth in scenes that invite repeated and lingering enjoyment. (3–7 years)

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Left to right: Roger Sutton, Maurice Sendak, Sergio Ruzzier, Frann Preston-Gannon, Ali Bahrampour, Denise Saldutti. Photo by Richard Asch.

Last year, I went to Maurice Sendak’s house to spend a day with the Sendak Fellows, four artists who were given time and studios to work on any project they desired, as well as access to Maurice for advice and encouragement. So who better to talk about his legacy? I asked each Fellow “what’s the most important thing you learned from Maurice?” (And, as a bonus, asked them for their favorite Sendak titles.)

Frann Preston-Gannon:
1. Maurice confirmed so many things that I already felt but didn’t have the confidence to admit. He taught me that while creating books everyone else should be forgotten, even children themselves. As he said during our stay: “Kids…What do they know?” In his profound and wonderful way he repeatedly told us “don’t let the bastards get you.” Most of all, the fellowship made me utterly grateful and proud to call myself an illustrator and to be doing what I love.

2. I hesitate to say Where the Wild Things Are as it seems too obvious, but that book means the world to me — and for the wicked Wild Thing inside, I believe it always will. The Sign on Rosie’s Door was also a great love of mine as a child.

Sergio Ruzzier:
1. That I will probably never be able to get rid of self-doubt. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

2. The Little Bear books, which were among the very first books I saw. Those pen drawings made an everlasting impression on me.

Ali Bahrampour:
1. It’s hard to pick out something I learned in any didactic sense. Maurice Sendak was himself a lesson: his integrity, his devotion to his art, his warmth and generosity to the fellows. I know that if I am ever tempted to make some concession or take the easy road, I will think of Maurice and be too ashamed to betray myself.

2. Part of me wants to pick In the Night Kitchen. Another part wants to pick the gorgeous drawings for Hector Protector. But my childhood self chooses Pierre, for whom I felt a perverse admiration for sticking to his principles even from inside the lion’s belly.

Denise Saldutti Egielski:
1. Live your life, he would say, be happy (he loved to laugh), it’s okay being different, it’s okay being sad or even frightened or frightening at times, let love rule, be brave and be bold, be yourself in your art, and then tell children anything you want. Maurice has had a profound effect on my life since he was my teacher when I was twenty and more recently when I was a Sendak Fellow. I feel like I’ll never stop learning from this great artist. I know I will never stop missing him.

2. Recently my sister sent me Somebody Else’s Nut Tree and Other Tales from Children by Ruth Krauss, illustrated by Maurice Sendak. I had never seen this book before, and now I can’t put it down — it’s so full of life, warmth, humor, sadness and all “gracefully illogical.”

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