Black Lamb

A Week in Literary History

June 10th, 2002

In 1928, American writer and illustrator Maurice Sendak (Where the Wild Things Are, 1963) is born in Brooklyn.

Maurice Sendak, b. June 10, 1928

Sendak writes and illustrates for children, but his own books transcend the genre of children’s literature in their psychological depth and poetic beauty. Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen don’t take long to read (or to look at), yet they remain indelibly in the mind ever after because of their unerring feel for children’s basic emotions, conscious and subconscious. Also active as a set designer for plays and operas and as the factotum of his own theater, The Night Kitchen, Sendak is quite simply a profound writer and artist.

Suggested Reading Written & illustrated Charlotte and the White Horse, 1955. Kenny’s Window, 1956. Where the Wild Things Are, 1964. Hector Protector and As I Went Over the Water, 1965. In the Night Kitchen, 1970. The Nutshell Library (contains Chicken Soup with Rice, One Was Johnny, Pierre, and Alligators All Around), 1986. Illustrated Robert Graves’s The Big Green Book, 1962. Poems from William Blake’s Songs of Innocence, 1967. Randall Jarrell’s The Animal Family, 1976. Jacob Grimm’s King Grisly-Beard, 1978. Frank Corsaro’s The Love of Three Oranges, 1984. Herman Melville’s Pierre, or The Ambiguities, 1995.

Posted by: The Editors
Category: Books and Authors, A Week in Literary History | Link to this Entry