Fitting that the passing of an artist should inspire so much art.  Here are a few tributes to Maurice Sendak that I’ve enjoyed. (I’ve assembled links to prose tributes at the bottom of my reminiscence of Maurice; The Comics Journal has its own page of mostly prose tributes, too.)

Pat Bagley

This is easily my favorite, and the one that I think Sendak himself would most have enjoyed. Pat Bagley dos a great job in representing Sendak’s un-sentimental approach to death. Sendak often spoke of his own mortality, and accepted the inevitable with a dark sense of humor.

Hanna Freiderichs (a.k.a. AgarthanGuide)

Under her Deviant Art pseudonym ArgathanGuide, Hanna Friederichs has created Avengers in a Sendakian parade.  You can find it on her Deviant Art page and Tumblr.  The image calls to mind Sendak’s many parades — in Ruth Krauss’s A Hole Is to Dig (1952), and his own Where the Wild Things Are (1963). The above image derives from a less well-known source: his 1961 mural for Larry and Nina Chertoff that now resides in the Rosenbach Museum.

The photo of Sendak’s mural, above, comes from The History Blog‘s great story about it, which I recommend.

Update, 13 May, 9:30 am: Thanks to Roger Sutton’s post, added Hanna Friederichs’ full name.

Harry Bliss

Harry Bliss‘s graveside portrait of Babar, Madeline, Curious George, and the Man with the Yellow Hat evokes how everyone in the children’s literature community has felt — artists, scholars, writers, librarians, teachers, editors, agents, all of us.  Losing Maurice Sendak has felt like a death in the family.  As Kenneth Kidd put it, “Could be the select company I keep, but my Facebook newsfeed is a virtual wake.”

Debbie Milbrath

Most artists invoke Where the Wild Things Are (presumably because it’s Sendak’s most recognizable work), but Debbie Milbrath references a more thematically appropriate work: Outside Over There (1981), in which Sendak filters the kidnapping (and accidental murder of) the Lindbergh baby through Mozart’s Magic Flute,  and ends up with a work that offers glimmers of hope through its darkness.

Andy Marlette

Andy Marlette imagines wild things paying tribute to Maurice Sendak.  There were many such cartoons — I’ve only included a few here.

Jeff Koterba

Jeff Koterba makes Sendak into Max, apt since — as Sendak has admitted — Max is a version of Maurice himself.  I suspect Sendak intended an allusion to Wilhelm Busch’s Max und Moritz (1865).

Nate Beeler

Nate Beeler imagines roaring terrible roars and gnashing terrible teeth — a first response to Maurice Sendak’s passing.  The first stage of grief.

Sarah McIntyre

Stuart Carlson

Stuart Carlson‘s tribute seems an apt one to end on. First, mourn. Next, hang your teddy bear, threaten the dog, shout at your mother, and board a boat (… to where the wild things are).

More on Sendak from Nine Kinds of Pie (this blog):

• The Most Wild Thing of All: Maurice Sendak, 1928-2012.  9 May 2012.  Remembering Maurice (including an extract from an interview I did with him in 2001).  At the bottom of the page, I’ve assembled links to many other Sendak tributes, obituaries, and so on.
• Eat, drink, and be merry.  8 Oct. 2011.  My review of Bumble-Ardy.
• In or Out?: Crockett Johnson, Ruth Krauss, Sexuality, Biography.  17 Feb. 2011.  I never talked about Sendak’s sexuality with him, and whether it was something Ruth and Dave knew about. Now that he’s out, should I mention it in the  bio?  I wrote this post to try to figure that out.
• Children’s Literature + Music = Great Album Covers.  11 Mar. 2012. A gallery of album covers by artists who also create children’s books, including Sendak, Lane Smith, many others.

Graphic genius Chris Ware designed the cover for my Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: How an Unlikely Couple Found Love, Dodged the FBI, and Transformed Children’s Literature (due this September from the University Press of Mississippi). The front cover is above.  The full, wrap-around cover is below.  Click on it for a larger image.  Trust me: you’ll really want to see all of the detail.  It’s beautiful.  It’s perfect.  I’ve never been happier about one of my book covers.  And for those keeping count, there are six previous books (two co-edited), all of which have striking covers.  The other designers were no slouches.

But Chris Ware is a genius. And no, I am not overusing that word.  But, yes, perhaps we should add a few more words to describe the cover itself. Clever. Detailed. Vivid. Art.

He’s done the cover in the style of Crockett Johnson.  In the case of the girl dancing above Krauss’s typewriter, it’s Mary Blair filtered through a Crockett Johnson aesthetic; for the boy sliding own her back, it’s Maurice Sendak filtered through Johnson. (The girl is from Krauss‘s I Can Fly, illustrated by Blair; the boy is from her A Hole is to Dig, illustrated by Sendak.)  Finally, Ware transforms all of these styles into something uniquely his own.

Fans of Johnson and Krauss: Are you getting all of the references here?  Would you like some help?  I could fully annotate this cover, but I wonder if that would detract from the pleasure of exploring it yourself.  The academic in me wants to proceed with the annotations, but the art lover wants to stay silent, so that your eyes can linger on Ware’s art, looking slowly, experiencing it on its own terms.  And… the art lover wins.  (No annotations.)  Enjoy!

And: Thank you, Chris Ware!

Harold taks his purple crayon to the walls of the Ben Franklin School, on Flax Hill, in Norwalk, Connecticut.  The school houses the Head Start program.  I’m told that the mural was painted by employees of Pepperidge Farm.

The photos are all courtesy of Jackie Curtis, a friend of Ruth and Dave — a.k.a. Ruth Krauss and Crockett Johnson.  Known as Dave to his friends, Johnson created Harold and the Purple Crayon (1955) and its six sequels.  Krauss, author of A Hole Is to Dig (1952, illus. by Maurice Sendak) and The Carrot Seed (1945, illus. by Johnson), was married to Johnson. Both lived in Rowayton (South Norwalk), about three miles from the school where the above mural appears. And, as readers of this blog will be aware, Johnson and Krauss are the subjects of my double biography, scheduled to appear in September of this year.

With thanks to the Children’s and Adolescent Literature Community (ChALC) for organizing the event and the Manhattan Public Library for hosting it, we held aMock Caldecott at this afternoon.  Of course, we weren’t able to get all of the books we wanted to look at — so, there are certainly Caldecott candidates we didn’t get to review.  Here are the top choices of our group (composed of undergraduates, graduate students, children’s lit faculty, and members of the community)

The Winner:

Lane Smith, Grandpa Green. 

A gentle, moving book about memory and age — and something of a departure for Smith.  Though it has humor and Smith’s beautiful, detailed artwork, it’s a more lyrical than his previous work, focused as it is on love and loss.  Though it’s reflective, it’s never melancholic: the boy’s journey through a topiary garden of his grandfather’s life is fun, with plenty of unexpected turns.  People liked the richness of the illustrations, the surprises in the story, and the fact that the book moved them.  For those who’d like to learn more, I gave the book a favorable review on this blog back in August.

The Honor Books:

John Rocco, Blackout.

People spoke of how the book captured a child’s perspective on something scary (the dark) and made that fun.  We also liked its In the Night Kitchen-style layout — the book’s early pages even use a similar color palette to Sendak’s book, which won a Caldecott Honor in 1971.  Set in Brooklyn, Rocco‘s book is about the 2003 blackout, and how the absence of power brought people together.  This won the second-highest number of votes.

Deborah Freedman, Blue Chicken.

This tied with the following book for third place in its number of votes.  It’s a story of a chicken who is an artist — or, possibly, an artist who happens to be a chicken.  But not “chicken” in, you know, the “afraid” sense.  This chicken is quite happy to experiment with paint, and color, and — oh, don’t worry, I’m sure the paint will come out of that.  As Freedman‘s Scribble (2007) was, this is a playful book about what art can do.  Only with chickens.

Melissa Sweet, Balloons Over Broadway.

This book is about Tony Sarg, who created the balloons for the original Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade — and, indeed, started the tradition of having helium characters floating over New York during this November holiday.  Sweet‘s mixed media, experiments with typeface, and shifts in perspective were appealing to some in the group, but others were more critical.  I enjoyed the book, but, given the discussion that preceded its 3rd-place finish, I was surprised to see it land in our Honor category.  Oh, and speaking of surprises, here are some ….

Books That I Thought Were Cool But That Didn’t Make the Cut:

Jon Klassen, I Want My Hat Back.

I was surprised that this one didn’t even land in an “Honor” category for us.  There was some conversation about it as a contender for the Geisel Award, which may be an accurate predictor, but shouldn’t preclude it being a contender for the Caldecott.  My guess is that its minimalist aesthetic may have cost it a few points, when in fact that should have won it points. The book is a masterpiece of economy and wit.  Each detail works exactly right.  And it’s really funny.  I hope Klassen gets something for this one.

Fans of the book might enjoy Not Just For Kids‘ interview with Klassen, in wich he describes the book as follows: ”I wanted to try and make it seem as though it was a badly rehearsed play with animals who were sort of brought in for the day to read these lines.”

Stephen Savage, Where’s Walrus?

I’ve an affinity for funny books, so naturally I’m drawn to this one — a comic tale of a walrus on the run, that mixes the find-the-character game of Where’s Waldo? with a playful narrative and plenty of joie de vivre.  Its design recalls posters from the 1930s: bold colors, sharp contrasts, and large bright shapes that look like they were printed.  Savage has created a wordless tale that bears repeated readings.  Good stuff.

And, ah, it has — as Julie Walker Danielson recently observed — been a great year for picture books.  Chris Van Allsburg’s Queen of the Falls, Chris Raschka’s A Ball for Daisy, Mat de la Pena and Kadir Nelson’s A Nation’s Hope: The Story of Boxing Legend Joe Louis, Maurice Sendak’s Bumble-Ardy.  And that list is far from complete.

So, what do you think?  What are your favorite picture books from 2011?  And which do you think will win the Caldecott Medal?

Related links:

• Julie Walker Danielson, “Seven Impossible Things: Top Ten Picture Books from 2011.”
• New York Times Book Review‘s “Best Illustrated Books of 2011.”
• Mock Caldecott 2010: Manhattan, Kansas Edition.

Going to be at ASA in Baltimore next week?  Consider a tour of the largest national repository of self-taught artistry.

Sponsored by the American Studies Association’s Visual Culture Caucus, this guided tour will take you through the museum’s collection of visionary art — that is, “art produced by self-taught individuals, usually without formal training, whose works arise from an innate personal vision that revels foremost in the creative act itself.” The only American museum of its kind, the American Visionary Art Museum is the largest national repository for self-taught artistry, featuring an acre — 3 buildings — of outsider artwork. The museum is located just over a mile from the conference hotel.  More information can be found at http://www.avam.org/

Cost is $10 per person.  Meet at 10 am at the American Visionary Art Museum (800 Key Highway, cross street is Covington).  OR meet promptly at 9:30 am in the Hilton Baltimore Lobby.  GoogleMaps alleges that it’s a 22-minute walk.  Since we need ten people for the group rate, Philip Nel <philnel@ksu.edu> would be grateful if you would sign up with him at your earliest convenience, but no later than Friday, October 21 at 9 am.

(Below, “A” is the Hilton, and “B” is the American Visionary Art Museum.)

View Larger Map

To support President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 1944 re-election campaign, Syd Hoff, Crockett Johnson, Lynd Ward, Hugo Gellert, William Gropper, and fourteen other artists illustrated this booklet.

The text is FDR’s speech made before the Teamsters Union on September 23rd, 1944 — also known as the “Fala speech,” since it features his dog, Fala.

Here is Syd Hoff’s page.

Here is Crockett Johnson’s page.  You’ll note that he drew the famous Fala himself.

All artists were members of the Independent Voters Committee of the Arts and Sciences for Roosevelt, a Popular Front alliance devoted to progressive causes.  Indeed, following the election, the group became the Independent Committee of the Arts, Sciences, and Professions (ICASP), which in December 1946 merged with the National Citizens Political Action Committee — becoming the Progressive Citizens of America (PCA).  The PCA became the Progressive Party, which ran Henry Wallace for President in 1948.

A long-time member of the Roosevelt administration, Wallace was FDR’s Vice President during his third term (1941-1945). He also served as Secretary of Agriculture (1933-1940), and Secretary of Commerce (1945-1946).  In that 1948 election, he came in fourth, just behind Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond.  Dewey, who came in second in 1944, again came in second this year.  The winner was Truman, who had been President since FDR’s death in 1945.

A much earlier version of The Purple Crayon and a Hole to Dig: The Lives of Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss (forthcoming from UP Mississippi in 2012) included appendices, listing members of progressive organizations to which Johnson belonged.  I find constellations like that to be fascinating.  Due to space, these appendices have been cut.  But I plan to post them at some point.

The problem with a blurb from Neil Gaiman on a cover is that, invoking Gaiman, it inevitably diminishes the book by comparison.  This is not the book’s fault.  Gaiman is one of our most gifted contemporary writers.  Catherynne M. Valente may not be, but I wouldn’t even be thinking about the comparison if Gaiman’s endorsement were absent from the cover. Her The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making is clever, well-plotted, engaging, and inventive.  It’s not Gaiman, but it is good.

Better points of comparison are L. Frank Baum and J.M. Barrie.  As Barrie does in Peter and Wendy, Valente several times calls children “heartless,” and deploys a narrative voice that shifts between third person, second person, and first person — though it stays mostly in third. As Barrie’s narrator does, Valente’s invokes that heartlessness to consider the child’s desire to abandon home for fairyland: “September did not even wave good-bye. One ought not to judge her: All children are heartless.”  That said, and again following Barrie’s example, Valente does invite us to judge her protagonist.  As many parents are, these narrators are torn between granting the child her freedom and keeping her close by.

Instead of being transported from Kansas via tornado, 12-year-old September gets whisked away from Nebraska by the Leopard of Little Breezes.  Also bringing to mind the Oz books, Valente’s fantastic characters combine nature and machinery in ways that recall Baum’s. There’s Lye, a golem made of soap; Gleam, a lamp that speaks through messages on its shade; and herds of velocipedes (free-range bicycles). Valente also seems to have taken seriously Baum’s goal (in his introduction to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz) to strive for a “a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heart-aches and nightmares are left out.”  Valente’s tone suggests that the “good” characters will not come to any harm.  That said, and as is also true of Baum, by about halfway through the book, much that threatens the heroine seems to revoke the promise of a nightmare-free story.  As the narrator observes, “I have tried to be a generous narrator and care for my girl as best I can. I cannot help that readers will always insist on adventures, and though you can have grief without adventures, you cannot have adventures without grief.”

In discussing a few of the many works that likely inspired The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her Own Making, I do not mean here to deride the book as “derivative.”  All art derives from other art.  What makes something feel original is the way in which it combines all that inspired it.  Neil Gaiman’s books do this work seamlessly. Transformed by his imagination, his influences feel organic.  They don’t feel like influences at all.  To read a Gaiman novel is to get caught up in his world — you may catch allusions to Norse mythology, or Victorian writer Lucy Clifford, but the feeling is something fashioned out of whole cloth.

This is not entirely the case with Valente, though the garrulous narrator may be partially the cause.  Fond of shifting out of third person and offering editorial comments, the narrative voice prevents readers from becoming too absorbed in the story.  Pushing its audience way from such absorption, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her Own Making instead gives them space to think about the narrative, the allusions, the books that seem to be Valente’s favorites.  As fans of Lemony Snicket know, such a narrator can also be fun to spend time with.  He (or she) treats the reader like a confidante, suggesting an intimate, even privileged, relationship with the person holding the book.  Valente’s narrator is not only good company; she (or he) is wise, witty, and unpredictable.  As she (he?) admits late in the novel, “I am a sly and wicked narrator. If there is a secret to be plumbed for your benefit, Dear Reader, I shall strap on a head-lamp and a pick-ax and have at it.”

In this review, I’ve deliberately avoided “secrets”: narrative is one of the many pleasures of The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairlyand in a Ship of Her Own Making.  So, you’ll find no spoilers here.  Featuring a female lead who is both thoughtful and brave, the book is a fantasy that offers a meditation on fantasy’s tropes.  As Dumbledore does in the Harry Potter series, this novel too dismisses the idea that its hero is a “chosen one.”  Late in the book, one of September’s allies remarks, “You are not the chosen one, September.  Fairyland did not choose you — you chose yourself.”

Should you choose to read Valente’s novel, you’ll find it a smart, metafictive tale, with plenty of adventure, humor, and insight.  Neil Gaiman calls it “A glorious balancing act between modernism and the Victorian fairy tale, done with heart and wisdom.”  He’s right.

Coming from a U.S. state whose governor is working tirelessly to defund the arts, I’ve been delighted to see so much art in Brisbane, Australia — most of it at no cost to the visitor.  GoMA’s Surrealism exhibit requires a ticket, but the rest of the museum has no admission fee.  Back in the States, MoMA has a $20.00 admission fee.

But, in Brisbane, you can…

… carry a giant guitar pick on your back

… kick a giant silver ball

… play peek-a-boo with a spaceship from the future

… or dance with giant angular metal.

All at no cost to you!

And I failed to get a picture of the disemboweled mechanical kangaroos, but those are nifty, too.

Above photo by David Jackmason, webmaster of BrisbaneIsHome.com.

Half-way through the “Surrealism: The Poetry of Dreams” exhibit at the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) here in Brisbane, museum-goers encounter this:

A clever riff on the Surrealist game that exploits the mysteries of accidental juxtapositions, this mid-exhibit bar also offered a welcome rest to travel-weary visitors (such as your humble narrator, who visited the exhibit following a 15-hour flight from Dallas-Ft. Worth).  Should you find yourself in Brisbane prior to 2 October 2011, the GoMA exhibit on Surrealism is excellent, bringing in not only the usual suspects (Marcel Duchamp, Giorgio De Chirico, Max Ernst, Jean Arp, René Magritte, Salvador Dalí, Man Ray), but also some whose art is not as well known (Victor Brauner, André Masson, Dora Maar) and Surrealism’s legacy in works by Jackson Pollock, Arshile Gorky, Dorothea Tanning and Joseph Cornell.

A particular strength of the exhibit are the half-dozen or so surrealist films interspersed (and continuously running) throughout the exhibit, such as the classic (and disturbing) Buñuel-Dalí collaboration Un Chien Andalou:

GoMA is also hosting a range of events in conjunction with the exhibit.

Since I’m in town to attend the International Research Society for Children’s Literature’s bi-annual conference, I should also mention that the exhibit has created kid-friendly captions for some of the artworks, and has created an interactive on-line component, The Surrealist Chronicle.  Available for perusing near the Exquisite Corpse snack bar (pictured above) and for sale at the museum store, the book Surrealism for Kids also invites children to deploy surrealist techniques to explore their creativity.

The only edition of James Marshall’s The Three Little Pigs (1989) currently in print has been vandalized by its publisher, Grosset & Dunlap.  In reprinting the book at 8” x 8” instead of its original 8.5” x 10.5”, the publisher has truncated images, altered the layout, changed the typeface, and removed the final illustration.

Here’s the original:

Here’s the new version, which crowds the layout, cramping Marshall’s watercolors:

Making the text difficult to read, Grosset & Dunlap also changed the elegant Berkeley serif font to what appears to be the title typeface from Sid and Marty Krofft’s Lidsville (1971-1973).

And the final image, in which the three pigs take their bow (on the back cover), has been removed entirely.  This is a shame because the front and back cover frame the tale as a theatrical performance.  It reminds us that no pigs were harmed in the making of this story; they were performing a production of The Three Little Pigs.

In one sense, what Grosset & Dunlap has done is not unique. Publishers do alter children’s books to make them fit a different format.  When they retain the original design sense, as in HarperCollins’ board-book version of The Carrot Seed, they minimize any sense of loss: the board-book Carrot Seed is still recognizably a work by Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss.  However, when they remove text, change layout and design — as in Random House’s board book of Dr. Seuss’s ABC — we end up with a work based on the original, but a demonstrably different book.  (For “L,” the original has “Little Lola Lopp. / Left leg. / Lazy lion / licks a lollipop.”  The board book has only “Lion with a lollipop.”)

What’s baffling in the case of Marshall’s The Three Pigs is the impetus for the publisher’s mangling of his original.  This is not a board book.  It’s a “Reading Railroad” book, and I have no sense what mandates these books being sold in a tinier size.

The practice is of course also offensive.  No one would suggest a slicing up a Rembrandt so that it would better fit in a particular gallery space.  Presumably, the fact that the art is intended for children makes a publisher feel justified in mangling its aesthetics.  Is the font intended to “kiddie-up” the text?  What possible rationale can there be for letting some alleged “designer” (who appears to have no training in design) damage the work of an artist who is no longer alive to protest?  No idea.

I wonder: Do Marshall’s heirs know that Grosset & Dunlap is defacing his artwork?  If they don’t, could someone please notify them?  And ask that they bring back the original work in its original format, please.