On the Phone With Maurice Sendak

By PAMELA PAUL in The New York Times 

This month marks the publication of “Bumble-Ardy,” the first book that Maurice Sendak has written and illustrated in 30 years. Mr. Sendak has been promoting the new book largely from his home in Connecticut.
I spoke with him by phone in June, on the day before his 83rd birthday; we talked about “Bumble-Ardy,” the trouble with some children’s literature and which among his own books is his favorite. Below, condensed and edited, are excerpts from that conversation:

The New York Times: What inspired your return to writing?
Mr. Sendak: There hasn’t been a stopping point. It just takes me longer because I’m older. The book that’s coming out in September has been two or three years in the making. I’m working on another book right now.
What do you think differentiates your work from other children’s books out there?
That’s a difficult question. But I don’t see that many books. I haven’t kept abreast. I live deep in the country. With books today, I’m not always sure if they’re truthful or faithful to what’s going on with children. If you look at the work of Tomi Ungerer, it’s passionate, it’s personal, it’s marvelous and it’s cuckoo, and it’s that’s kind of veracity that’s always made for good children’s literature.
If there’s anything missing that I’ve observed over the decades it’s that that drive has declined. There’s a certain passivity, a going back to childhood innocence that I never quite believed in. We remembered childhood as a very passionate, upsetting, silly, comic business.
I teach. I stress character, character, character. And for authors to go where you want; go where you will. Children will go everywhere.

When your work first appeared, it was considered to be new, something different. What were you doing that nobody else had done?
I was developing a child who I recognized as myself as a child, from my observations of other children around me in Brooklyn. We were wild creatures. We did things that were objectionable.
Max, to me, was a very average normal kid, but he upset a lot of people at the time. He yelled at his mother, he talked back to her, she deprived him of food and then gave it to him. Children who fight back, children who are full of excitement are the kind of children I like.
Max was a little beast, and we’re all little beasts. That was what was so novel.

(Photo left - Maurice Sendak - John Dugdale) 

Some of your books have been controversial. Why do you think that’s so?
It has always seemed kind of foolish to me. Everything that was happening in my work was happening in my life. I recorded what was important to me. “Outside Over There” was and is my particular favorite because it had so much to do with my sister and the awfulness of her having to take care of me. She pushed me and pulled me. I loved her and I hated her. There was nothing in her that made me think girls weren’t as capable of anger the way boys were. We all did the most outlandish things, some of which we told our parents, most of which we did not. We were all keenly aware that parents were scaredy cats.
You mustn’t scare parents. And I think with my books, I managed to scare parents.
Randolph Caldecott was a sneaky guy. Because under the guise of stories about little animals, he had the same passion for childhood. If you just look at the surface of them, they look like nice English books for kiddies. But his books are troubling if you spend time with them. He inspired me. I adored Caldecott. Probably his idea, or my interpretation of him, was that children’s books should be fair to children. Not to soften or to weaken.
Before that, the attitude towards children was: Keep them calm, keep them happy, keep them snug and safe. It’s not a putdown of those earlier books. But basically, they went by the rules that children should be safe and that we adults should be their guardians. I got out of that, and I was considered outlandish. So be it.
Full conversation at New York Times