We Love You So – Where The Wild Things Are – Spike Jonze

It sounds like the beginning of a bildungsroman. Alsace-born illustrator Tomi Ungerer–a longtime friend of Maurice Sendak!–arrived in New York 53 years ago with a $60 in his pocket and a suitcase full of drawings. Thanks to the startling originality of his work, Ungerer became an instant success and released his first children’s book, “The Mellops Go Flying,” to reverent reviews in 1957. “Tomi influenced everyone,” Maurice Sendak has said. The illustrator went on to publish 80 books throughout the following decade.

But then Ungerer left America for good, and somehow his work drifted into obscurity (though the books still show up on websites selling for a mint.) Therefore it seems both long overdue and exquisitely fortuitous that Phaidon, the British publisher, is issuing new editions of Ungerer classics, including “Moon Man”, which Maurice Sendak described at the time of its original release as “easily one of the best picture books in recent years.”

Like Sendak, Ungerer has a mind for the absurd and the humorous, as well as an allergic reaction to sentimentality. He’s not afraid to dabble in darkness, and he takes the thoughts and fears of children quite seriously. His illustrations, too, are both timeless and totally unlike anything else. Here’s to the rebirth of a Sendak kindred spirit.

Matt Furie has fathered a legion of beguiling beasts in his rainbow-hued drawings, expanding his own personal zoology each time he confronts the infinite emptiness of a blank page. Even while they approach the mind-boggling biodiversity of those interminable Pokémon, Furie’s characters manage to convey an emotional depth that approaches Jim Henson levels. Depicting moments of sensuality, rage, despair and intense lethargy, the artist approaches his work with a deadpan sense of humor that often comes wrapped in a burrito of delicious sincerity. Here are his thoughts on children’s literature.

Did you have any favorite picture books as a child?

Where’s Waldo series, The Far Side Galleries, Richard Scarry’s Best Storybook Ever, The first book I could ever remember reading was about a yellow bear-like animal that had colored spots. This animal felt bad because he didn’t fit in at the zoo. He could use his spots like frisbees and make them bigger, smaller, etc. It seemed like a Dr. Seuss book but different. I also remember really liking this book called This is Weird about some kids on a boat that end up on an abandoned and haunted island full of weird trapdoors and tunnels and old houses and paths and ladders.

What are your childhood recollections of Maurice Sendak’s work? Are you influenced by his visual language?

I liked the Wild Things book when I was little but it wasn’t until I started researching children’s books in college that I came to appreciate it. I like that book a lot but I’m a bit unfamiliar with his other stuff. I read the book The Art of Maurice Sendak and remember him saying that the monsters in the book were based on his relatives and his experience with them being too scary and all in his face at family dinners when he was a kid. I also remember him saying that a lot of his ideas involve eating/the fear of being eaten. As for his visual language, I thinks its a perfect balance of skill, childishness, flatness, and light.

Do you think you’ll ever make a children’s book of your own? What would it be about?

That would make my mom really happy. I’m not sure what it would be about but I know it would be a fantasy. It would start off in the real world of a kid (like Alice in Wonderland, Wizard of Oz, Neverending Story, Princess Bride, Where the Wild Things Are, Harry Potter, Labyrinth, and pretty much every good children’s fantasy plot). There would definitely be lots of wacky and magical creatures.

Were you prone to retreating into imaginary worlds, growing up? If so, please describe!

I used toys, video games, t.v., movies, and drawing to retreat into imaginary worlds. I remember being in the backseat of the car and looking out of the window and pretending that I was a creature running and hopping along the trees. I think every kid is prone to retreat into imaginary worlds.

Like Sendak’s Wild Things, the creatures in your work often defy biological classification. Is it a challenge to come up with such alien forms?

Nothing I could ever come up with could ever be stranger or more fascinating than what’s out there.

The critic, scholar and novelist comments on children’s books in his On Writers and Writing:

“It is true that the children’s story, like the traditional gothic tale, tends to use a very special language; but it is not a language into which large parts of our common experience cannot be translated…

Great children’s writers, like great writers of any kind, are complex, multitudinous of self.”

If the name “Lowly Worm” means anything to you, you’ll leap at the mention of children’s book illustrator Richard Scarry. A Boston-born artist who moved to Switzerland in his middle age, Scarry spent eight hours a day at his desk cranking out classics like Richard Scarry’s Please & Thank You and Richard Scarry’s Find Your ABC’s, both of which were canny combinations of storytelling and lesson-learning. If you’re a young adult of a certain age, it is possible that Scarry is responsible for the greater part of your vocabulary.

“It’s a precious thing to be communicating to children, helping them discover the gift of language and thought,” Scarry said of his work. “I’m happy to be doing it.”

Very happy indeed, if his more than 300 published books are any indication. Like all the best children’s book illustrators, Richard Scarry was particularly adept at stuffing his drawings with tantalizing details that stuck in the minds of young kids. His pièce de résistance was 1963’s Best Word Book Ever, which included illustrations of more than 1,400 objects.

Herewith, an Introduction to the Busy World of Richard Scarry:

Of all the ways to become immortal (locating the philosopher’s stone, drinking the elixir of life, becoming a cyborg), the simplest by far is to illustrate a popular children’s book. Doing this guarantees a person permanent residence in the imaginations of children spanning far into the future–and what better way to keep the flame alive?

Clement Hurd is the gentle genius behind the bedtime classic Goodnight, Moon. Published in 1947, the book features a lulling text by Margaret Wise Brown and lush drawings of a cozy bunny rabbit sending himself to dreamland by saying goodnight to all the items in his nursery. Goodnight, Moon isn’t really a story, inasmuch as nothing happens over the course of the book, but it does contain the key ingredients of bedtime literature: repetition and rhyme.

Still, most kids don’t remember many of the words. After all, they were designed to put us to sleep. The illustrations, on the other hand, are imminently sticky. Remember the bunny’s slippers? His bowl of mush? The rug that looks suspiciously like a Siberian tiger? Of course you do. Hurd illustrated almost 100 other books, but it is Goodnight, Moon that will keep him alive in the thoughts of future bed-bound young’ns.

Any American child can tell you that the gold, embossed Caldecott Medal slapped on the face of a picture book implies merit and critical reverence. But these days, the man for whom the award was named is much more elusive than his medal. Randolph Caldecott was a prolific British artist in the late 19th century, broadcasting his work across the cultural spectrum through everything from travel guides and cartoons to architectural sketches and sculpture. He was famous in his day for his more formal work, exhibited at the esteemed Royal Academy of the Arts– but it was his picture books that would prove to be most influential in the long run. Mr. Sendak, take it away:

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Need a gift for an especially deserving (or misbehaving) individual? Investigate Hector Protector and As I Went Over the Water, Maurice Sendak’s 1965 illustration of two nursery rhymes. The tidy tome is little talk and all action–like the best children’s books–and Sendak renders its lessons with his customary detail-rich drawings. Morality tales were never so fun.

Maurice Sendak’s good friend and contemporary, the late James Marshall, wrote and illustrated many popular children’s books in his time, including The Stupids*, a series which depicts the relentless confusion of the always-upbeat Stupid family through a series of comical oddball misadventures. Arguably the funniest of these is The Stupids Die– a title that aroused controversy amongst uptight parents and closed-minded librarians, and made the book a perrenial favorite on “Most Banned Books” lists. The Stupids Die is an altogether innocent celebration of foolishness: revolving around an electrical blackout that the Stupids naturally mistake for the end of it all, the family stumbles around their house in the dark until Grandfather Stupid stops by for a visit:

“Welcome to heaven,” said Mr. Stupid.

“This isn’t heaven,” said Grandfather.
“This is Cleveland.”

“This may sound stupid,” said Buster.
“But I think this is our living room.”

Maurice reveals his deep admiration for The Stupids Die and its controverial title in an interview promoting his posthumous collaboration with Marshall, Swine Lake:

“That’s the only thing I truly envy Jim for,” Sendak laments. “Deep envy. I think The Stupids Die is the best title ever. I can’t forgive him for having that title. I used to tell him that. I bought the original poster for the book, and it hangs in one of my rooms.”

Swine Lake is illustrated by Maurice and based on Marshall’s manuscript about a wolf who hatches a plan to devour a ballet comapny comprised entirely of pigs, only to end up discovering his admiration for the art of dance and joins them on stage. It’s Three Little Pigs meets Billy Elliot. When asked, in the same interview, if the wolf learns a lesson at the end of Swine Lake, Maurice snorts disdainfully and responds: “I never wrote a book where I taught a lesson. And the wolf is going to eat those pigs eventually. He just doesn’t do it in this book.”

* Yes, Marshall’s books served as inspiration for the ill-conceived John Landis-directed 1996 Tom Arnold vehicle The Stupids, but don’t let that ruin it for you– his books share almost nothing in common with that wreck of a movie.