Thank You Mr. Sendak

If I had to pick one aesthetic experience from childhood that has stuck with me into adulthood, it would have to be reading "Where the Wild Things Are" by Maurice Sendak. I remember the old copy we would check out from the library time and again. I remember the way the scuffed cellophane around the dust jacket would crinkle. The way the spine would crackle as the book was pushed open. The lovely, musty smell of library, ink and paper inside. Most of all, I remember the illustrations. The soft, sure coloring of the brush. The wild, yet contained cross hatching of the ink pen. The strangely intelligent faces of the Wild Things. The scruffy thatch of Max's hair when his wolf suit was pulled back. In fact, the series of drawings that depicted Max's room growing into a forest, after he was sent to bed without supper, set my 5 year old imagination off on a course that I am, to this day, attempting to navigate with my own art.

Beyond the aesthetic, however, were the feelings the book stirred up in my young psyche. Max's naughtiness and "mischief of one kind...and another" stirred feelings of anxiety and anticipation for the consequences that would surely follow. The rough sea on which Max sailed "in and out of weeks and almost over a year" stirred up a sense of wonder and amazement that a boy could be brave enough pilot his own boat across an ocean to another land. And the soft, pink sunset after the Wild Rumpus while the Wild Things dozed and Max sat awake in his tent stirred in me a feeling of longing and loneliness. Finally, when Max returned home to find that not only was his supper waiting for him, but that it was "still hot", a feeling of comfort and maternal security salved the sting and burn of all those other emotions. Emotions that a child, before reading a book like "Where the Wild Things Are" most likely would not have been called on to feel in the context of a children's story.

Now that I am writing and illustrating stories of my own, I would never dream of producing a work that reached the perfection of words and art that Maurice Sendak achieved with "Where the Wild Things Are". He used his singular talent for pictures and language to tell children a story that picture books until that time had not dared to tell. One that was honest about the feelings, both good and bad, associated with being a child. After all, these are the same feelings associated with being an adult – we've just learned to cope with them in one way..."and another".

As an artist, I thank Mr. Sendak for his incredible contribution to the picture book genre. He has offered me and other picture book artists a paragon to aspire to. As a person, I thank him for teaching me as a young child, and reminding me as an adult, that children, after all, are people. They are people who think and feel, dream and despair. The difference is that a child has less life experience with which to place those thoughts, feelings, dreams and despairs into context. Mr. Sendak was kind, wise and talented enough, with his wonderful book, to provide children and adults a little context. Thank you Mr. Sendak.

Josh