“That’s the best fun in all of this – the layers of meaning, the layers of storytelling,” Sendak said in a 2007 interview. “When you hide another story in a story, that’s the story I am telling the children.” There’s a Mystery There: Sendak on Sendak is the exhibit put together by the The Rosenbach Museum & Library in Philadelphia, the repository for Sendak’s work. “The sadness and complexities of the Holocaust, the rich memories of his parent’s lives in Europe, and his own childhood adventures and anxieties are currents that run through all of Sendak’s work.”
We’ve seen the exhibit twice now at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, the last time with two of our grandchildren, who are able to read the detailed ‘captions’ for the drawings, many of them the finished versions for his best known and lesser known books. Fraidy Aber, Director of Education at the Contemporary Jewish Museum comments, “The personal childhood themes built into Sendak’s seemingly whimsical storytelling act as a perfect entry point for young audiences.”
Museumgoers of all ages were seated in an area watching a video of Sendak consisting of his musings about his life’s work while a few feet away children and adults paged through his books.
In the ’70s my husband took our children (I had Saturday duty at Time Magazine and could not go) to a bookstore signing in the Connecticut town where Sendak lived. Those valued signed books are still on shelves in our homes and the productions of Brundibar attended as well as a cinema version of Where the Wild Things Are for viewing in theaters. I was deeply sorry that I had not been along on that trip especially when he offered to sign a book at a later date that we had not received by the time the signing took place. It was an immensely kind gesture.
We have four copies of I Saw Esau; The Schoolchild’s Pocket Book that I purchased for the family with a illustration done by Sendak of the publisher, himself, and the editors on the frontispiece of the volume. Iona Opie who, along with her husband Peter Opie, edited the traditional rhymes that comprise the book, writes in the introduction to the Candlewick Press edition about Sendak’s preparation for his illustrations:
“Amelia Edwards, art director at Walker Books, made a special copy of this new version for Maurice to carry around in his pocket wherever he went. He could scribble on the pages and fill in the spaces whenever he felt like it.”
“Now, with Sendak illustrations, the book has a new strength and extra dimension. It is more than ever a declaration of a child’s brave definace in the face of daunting odds.”
Perhaps that last sentence is an apt summary, too, of the exhibit itself.
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