Maurice Sendak and the Art of Children`s Book Illustration, Poole L.M.

This new edition includes a new introduction, a new bibliography and many more illustrations. The text has been completely revised and updated.

Illustrated. With bibliography and notes. 268 pages. ISBN 9781861714312.

www.crmoon.com

MAURICE SENDAK (1928-2012), has become America's premier children's book author and illustrator. He's as important - and as adored - as Theodore Geisel (Dr Seuss). Best known for his trilogy of classic picture books - Where the Wild Things Are (1963), In the Night Kitchen (1970) and Outside Over There (1981) - Sendak has also written many other books (though mainly in children's book form). His interpretation of the Grimm Brothers, The Juniper Tree, although it is less well-known, could be said to be his most accomplished work.

This book aims to consider some of Maurice Sendak's most significant works, concentrating on the children's books and the picture books. Other chapters explore Sendak's relationship with the movies and art of Walt Disney (which Sendak admires); his interpretation of classic fairy tales; a brief consideration of the fairy tale form; Sendak's links with the tradition of children's book illustration; and finally a comparison of Sendak's art with that of other book illustrators.

The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature offers a typical assessment of Maurice Sendak as one of the highpoints of modern children's book illustration:

Quite apart from his outstanding draughtmanship and mastery of styles, Sendak's exploration of the realms of the unconscious in Where the Wild Things Are and its successors lifts his work beyond the confines of the children's picture book and places it among major art of the 20th century.

Joyce Whalley and Tessa Chester write of Sendak:

Sendak's superiority amounts to far more than mere technical ability and an instinct for interpreting a text, whether his own or that of someone else. His sympathy and concern with every book he illustrates mounts to an almost religious obsession when it comes to his own picture books... His vision is unique, his draughtsmanship par excellence, and his work as a whole lifts him well into the ranks of the great illustrators of all time.

Sendak's as important - and as adored - as Theodore Geisel (Dr Seuss). This study also considers Sendak's illustrations for fairy tales, such as the Brothers Grimm pictures, collected in The Juniper Tree.

There is also a chapter on Maurice Sendak and Walt Disney, later works such as Dear Mili, and a discussion of Sendak and other book illustrators.

Fully illustrated. With bibliography and notes. 192 pages. ISBN 9781861713087.

www.crmoon.com

FROM CHAPTER ONE

MAURICE SENDAK begins not with the pictures, as one expect, but with the words. He has explained on a number of occasions that his written texts have to be 'very good before one considers illustrating them.' The words are important, because they locate the pictures within a particular narrative, context and meaning. The words 'anchor' the pictures into a dominant or preferred set of meanings, which Sendak likes to get right first. 'I like to think of myself as setting words to pictures. A true picture book is a visual poem'.

Sendak's concern with words also reminds us of his emphasis on storytelling. All Sendak's books are narrative books, books which move from one point in a story to another. The pictures, Sendak asserted, must not merely illustrate the words. The pictures must always do more than that. The words must allow for an openness of interpretation in the pictures. The two, words and pictures, work in tandem, but not merely to mirror each other, Sendak remarked. The written text, if it's a good one, will leave gaps of meaning into which the pictures can be inserted. There must be an ambiguity to what is happening in the written text too, so that the text can function on a number of levels. It is the conscious working at this split-level meaning that marks Sendak out from other illustrators. His books always have a carefully cultivated symbolic dimension: they are never merely descriptions of physical action.