Happy birthday Maurice Sendak!
OK, the classic children's illustrator actually turned 80 this summer, and based on this New York Times article he's anything but happy.
Of course, he has reason to be so; he lost most of his relatives in the Holocaust, he's struggled with lifelong depression, he had a triple bypass earlier this year and his longtime partner died in May of 2007 and he's still grieving the loss of that 50-year relationship.
When I was a child, his books didn’t appeal to me, but they do as an adult. I think it's because that sort of dark worldview comes through, without being inappropriate for kids or trying way too hard to be funny. Instead, books like "Where the Wild Things Are" acknowledges that something like an island full of fierce monsters can exist in the imagination of a normal kid, as can the kind of wild bad behavior that got Max sent to his room in his first place. It has a certain degree of melancholy, of understanding what it's like to be really, really sad.
That honest view of children didn’t appeal to me when I was one, maybe because many of his books also seemed very specific to a type of urban childhood I wasn’t having. But as an adult, I regret missing out on these books for that melancholic edge I didn’t enjoy then. But if "Where The Wild Things Are" didn’t enrich my childhood, at least it's enriched my parenthood.
So happy birthday anyway, Mr. Sendak. And thanks.
