Children's Books discussion

Interesting article, though it certainly isn't how I pictured him! It's not a cheerful article, so fair warning if you want to imagine him as some cute, happy old man who loves writing for children. I gotta say he kind depressed the heck outta me. But, he does have some very interesting things to say about writing for children, and I think his success proves that he does know how to speak to them.

"The world cares about the 83-year-old Sendak, whether he likes it or not. He's a dark soul who has been canonized, a hero who never asked for the job. With a sigh, and a wink, he confides that bookstores still contact him for appearances and children still call out and ask if he's the guy who wrote 'Where the Wild Things Are.'"

If you're curious to read more:
http://news.yahoo.com/sendak-still-ag...

I think he has some really fascinating things to say about writing for children. In speaking of the influence of the holocaust on his work:
"It forced me to take children to a level that I thought was more honest than most people did," he says. "Because if life is so critical, if Anne Frank could die, if my friend could die, children were as vulnerable as adults, and that gave me a secret purpose to my work, to make them live. Because I wanted to live. I wanted to grow up."

(I'm not sure I will look at "In the Night Kitchen" the same way again--and, no, it has nothing to do with the boy being naked; it's because of the oven. Wow, I never made that connection.)

"People say, 'This is dark,' and 'That is scary,'" Selznick added. "People have said it's inappropriate for children. But, of course, none of that is true. It is appropriate for children, and that unsentimentality and lack of fear is inspiring."

Thanks for the article!

Glad you both appreciated the article. I agree that it's great that he doesn't condescend to children. I never really knew a thing about his personal life, so this was all news to me. At least he is able to channel his past in a positive way to help children today.

(Oh, and Chandra, I thought that was so cool how they just mentioned his partner so matter-of-factly, not making some big deal about his being gay but just indicating how important his partner was in his life. I wonder if Sendak came out to the book public before or if this was the first mention of it?)