On Wild Things and Maurice Sendak

As a tribute to Maurice Sendak, who died Tuesday at the age of 83, I read my 3yo son Where the Wild Things Are before his nap. Riley is a Wild Thing incarnate. He, too, has dressed up in animal costumes, chased our dog with forks and swords, threatened to eat me up. I have the teeth marks to prove it.

In the rocking chair, his warm, heavy body snuggled against mine in the darkened room, we imagined a forest growing up around us, the ceiling hung with vines. We roared our terrible roars and gnashed our terrible teeth and showed our terrible claws. I picked my favorite character: the stripey Wild Thing, and Riley picked his: Max, naturally. Then, when I got to the final page, my son delivered the most rewarding response an author could ever hope to get from a child: “Again!”

Maurice Sendak delivered the commencement address at my graduation from Vassar College in 1996. I don’t remember much about his speech, except that I’m pretty sure he mentioned safe sex and he closed with “Let the wild rumpus start!”

It wasn’t until years later that I read interviews with him and learned that a) he did not have any children, like so many other renowned children’s authors, and b) he was kind of a curmudgeon. But man, was he a fascinating character. Did you know he worked as a window dresser at FAO Schwarz in the 1940’s?

Here are some of my favorite Maurice Sendak quotes:

On writing for children:

“They are a better audience and tougher critics [than adults]. Kids tell you what they think, not what they think they should think.”

“They don’t know about bestsellers. They go for what they enjoy. They aren’t star chasers and they don’t suck up. It’s why I like them.”

“Children are tough, though we tend to think of them as fragile. They have to be tough. Childhood is not easy. We sentimentalize children, but they know what’s real and what’s not. They understand metaphor and symbol. If children are different from us, they are more spontaneous. Grown-up lives have become overlaid with dross.”

On e-books:

“I hate them. It’s like making believe there’s another kind of sex. There isn’t another kind of sex. There isn’t another kind of book! A book is a book is a book.”

And on Where the Wild Things Are:

“Children who fight back, children who are full of excitement are the kind of children I like.”

Something tells me Sendak would have really liked my boys.

LINK O’ THE DAY: Writer Elizabeth Bastos, on reading “In the Night Kitchen” as an adult.