outside over there. (129) and higglety pigglety pop! or there must bemore to life. (130). maurice sendak.

in the maurice sendak documentary "tell them anything you want", sendak discussed two books i hadn't read before, "outside over there" and "higglety pigglety pop!".  they both meant a lot to him so i had to read them.

as i discussed in the post about the documentary, sendak was traumatized by a newspaper photograph he saw as a child of the lindbergh baby's remains.  as a result of this photo he became obsessed with the case and was quite knowledgable about it.   as he explained in the documentary, this book was about the lindbergh baby and also his sister who took care of him.

the story is the tale of a sister who is charge of her baby sister and who resents the responsibility a little.  one day goblins came in and took away the baby to make her into a bride.  the sister crawled out backward but after the advice of her father's song from his ship and sea, discovered the way to save her baby sister.  the older sister played her own and the goblins danced until they became a stream.  then, the sisters returned safely home.  the older one proud to take care of the younger one.

it is a scary story especially for children but with a happy ending.  sendak's giving the lindbergh baby a safe return home.

"outside over there" received a cadecott honor for its illustrations.  the book is filled with beautiful yet dark pictures.  haunting yet lovely, like this one of the baby being kidnap and the ice replica left in her place.  

in the documentary, sendak points out that there is an drawing of the actual

lindbergh baby:

such a sad fate for the lindbergh baby but "outside over there" demonstrated how book are therapy for writers.

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in the documentary, sendak also mentioned how he wished he had written another book like "higglety pigglety pop! of there must be more to life." after reading it, i wish he had written more like it.  it reminded me of "alice in wonderland" with it's clever word play and puns.  in addition to its cast of colorful animal characters.

as sendak shared in the documentary, it featured his dog, jennie.  jennie was in a handful for sendak's books but in this one she was the featured character:

in the story, jennie has it all.  everything she needs and would want and a master that loves her.  but she is nagged by this feeling that there is more to life so she lives on an adventure.

i would retell the story but its really one you need to experience firsthand because there is a bit of wordplay.  lets just say in the end, jennie gets her adventure!

i will say that i did expect jennie to return home to her master, having discovered there really wasn't much to life as she had expected.  i thought the book was going to be a warning against wanting too much of life. but luckily i was wrong.  i was disappointed with myself for the conclusion i had expected.  kids and adults should be encouraged to go out into the world and discover it.  growing up in a small town it was an easy option to stay home.  thank my lucky stars, i went out into the world, like jennie, and was able to have experiences that would have never occurred if i stayed in delano.  i realized that kids need to told there is more to life than what they have seen.  they need to be adventurous.  it's in important lesson for kids of all ages.

(ps i think this would make a greater graduation gift than "oh the places you will go.")

one was johnny. (119) and chicken soup with rice. (120) maurice sendak.

when i took brother bear to the library for the story and craft time, i found these two books in the little little kids section. 

of course, after seeing the documentary "tell them anything you want" (watch it and read that post!), i had a little bit more insight on his drawings.

but first, how sweet is this dedication to his partner?

"one was johnny" is a counting book.  at first, johnny was all alone and each page, a new random visitor barges in: a rat, a cat, a dog, a mail monkey (a monkey that delivers mail) and even a robber.  yes a robber.

but johnny handled the situation with a threat that is a bit of a trend in sendak books:

yup, he threatened to eat them like a "wild thing" and it works!  they all leave.  and also justice is served with their leaving, ie the tiger took the robber to jail.

also the dog, as i learned in the doc, is a dog that shows up in a lot of sendak's books.  the dog is based on his real life dog jennie.  here she is:

the second book was:

"chicken soup with rice" it is a book of months and each month the child discovered another way of enjoying actual chicken soup or the idea of chicken soup.  

my favorites were february because he dined with his snowman:

and august because the child turned into a pot:

and jennie was in this one too.

p.s.  seriously parents teach your kids to not draw in library books!!!!

my brother's book. maurice sendak. (117)

after seeing maurice sendak discuss his love for his older brother jack and his  desire to create a simple but definitive book in the documentary, "tell them anything you want", i couldn't help but be emotional when i read this book.  i was just happy that sendak was able to create a book to honor his brother.

i have never read shakespeare's "winter's tale" so did get any of the allusions, but luckily the forward explained it to me.

the book is the story of two brothers who are separated when a star collides with earth.  one brother, jack (the name of maurice's brother) is sent to a world of ice and is frozen.  the other brother guy tumbles into the middle of the earth where he is captured by a bear.  he tells the bear a riddle which can not be solved and is released.  he then finds his brother, jack who has become a tree.  they embrace and are together again.  

the story is short and sweet but the true story behind it is which is what makes it great.  i do not believe in an afterlife but i do believe in it for my family.  i think heaven is too complicated to truly exist. i mean what age will you be? who will you be with? what will you do? and what about all the gray areas in life, i know religious people who don't deserve to be in heaven and sinners who do not deserve hell.  life is too complex for heaven to exist.  the only reason i would want an afterlife to exist was if i could be my family.  

i was raised mormon and one of their central beliefs is that families should be sealed in the temple so they can be together in heaven. growing up i never questioned this but as an adult, i saw how illogical it was.  we do not chose the family we are born into and they are the ones that install in us morals and help us become who we are.  due to this, i could not understand why god would separate families when we die.  it seems cruel, god sticks us with people on earth, we love them unconditionally and purposely separates us when we die unless we are sealed in a mormon temple.  i could and can not believe in a god that is so demanding and unreasonably cruel.  my loss of faith in this mormon doctrine came when my grandfather passed away.  my grandfather was muslim and very stubborn so though a baptism for the dead was probably performed for him, i doubt he would agree to convert in the spiritual world.  as a result i could not believe in a doctrine that would not allow me to be with my grandfather based on faith and not love.  i would rather be with my grandfather in heaven than with god.  at the risk of sounding blasphemous, i know what my grandfather did for me in my life versus what god theoretically did for me.  i know no one should be before god, but if i had to choose between a family member and god, i would go with the family member.  i would not follow the example of abraham and would have never put issac on the alter.  

due to this, i appreciate how it is guy's love for his brother that reunites them.  love can overcome all and like captain and tennille sang "will keep us together".

also the artwork is lovely:

bumble-ardy. maurice sendak. (116)

i requested "bumble-ardy" thanks to that google doodle for maurice sendak's birthday and after reading realized google should have had bumble-ardy as the doodle because he shares the same birthday as maurice sendak!

so i remember reading about "bumble-ardy" because it has a dark beginning and a bunch of closed minded parents were upset by the prologue.  and of course, the prologue was my favorite!  so in the prologue, we learn that poor bumble-ardy had never had a birthday party, until he was nine.  the reason being that his family did not allow for fun so he never had a birthday party.  however, his family got fat and then slaughtered.  this is where people get upset but i mean they are pigs and we do slaughter them, so not sure why people were in an uproar.  also parents die, it sad but it's true.

back to the story. bumble-ardy finally had a party because his aunt (who adopted him) celebrated his birthday and bumble-ardy felt he could have a party. 

when his aunt went to work, bumble-ardy threw a party.  it got wild and out of control.  

his aunt came home and of course is outrage.  i mean check out her threat below:

and that was to pigs!! talk about harsh!

but just like life, though his aunt was angry, it did not mean that she stopped loving bumble-ardy.  i bet a lot of kids sadly think that their parents love them less when they make mistakes but their love doesn't falter, as seen below:

another story of sedak's that lets us know our family will loves us regardless of how reckless we can get in life.

tell them anything you want: a portrait of maurice sendak by lance bangs and spike jonze.

on june 10th, google celebrated maurice sendak's birthday with this doodle:

adorable right? when i clicked on the doodle, it brought up a bunch of sendak info and i realized i never watched the documentary lance bangs and spike jonze made about him.  so of course i requested it from the library.

i didn't see "tell them" when it first came out because i didn't have hbo but i regret waiting this long to watch it. it was a beautiful yet sad documentary and my heart is now filled with even more love for maurice sendak.

as a kid i was always drawn to "where the wild things are" because of the illustrations but it wasn't until i was an adult that i became emotionally attached to the the book.  it wasn't until 2009, when i heard about spike jonze's film adaption of "where the wild things are", and i reread the book, did i finally identify with max.  i wrote a blog post about it, which your can read here: where the wild things are.

 

this emotional attachment to "where the wild things are" mixed with the honesty of sendak and then soundtracked by karen o (like the the movie) resulted in me crying throughout most of this documentary.  i just wanted to love sendak and make him feel loved, he has brought so much joy into the world with his stories yet he doesn't realize it (when jonze tells him this in the doc, he admits he spoiled).  maurice also suffered so much in life that the darkness of his books came to light.

i loved all of the stories maurice shared.  i will highlight some of my favorite parts but if you haven't seen the documentary, stop here.  go watch it and enjoy it and then come back to read my blog.  

(start here again)

 

here are my favorite stories:

the tale of his parents attempting to abort him and constantly telling him about it was sad but like he said it was different time.  they were not being cruel but honest.  children are a financial burden.  i always saw myself having at least four but now that i am older, it might be only one.  (i am also getting too old to have multiple kids)

when discussing his parents at a different time in the documentary, maurice made a very important point, "having children requires talent."  people have children but are not prepared to raise them. especially today, people are still children themselves and having kids.  as maurice said, raising kids is like an art.  i have always been extremely grateful that my grandmother raised me because she knew how to raise kids.  it was not simply because she had raised her own kids but grandma bea had also gone back to school to become a teacher when she was in her fifties.  my uncle boon always jokes that her kids got spanked but the grandkids didn't because grandma learned about child development.  i always tell people i had the best childhood and i know it's because of grandma bea's experience as a preschool teacher.  she provided a home in which we learned the importance of education in addition to feeling loved and valued.  i did well in school and was a well behaved child because of my grandma.  i consider myself a lucky one because not all parents know good parenting.  

maurice did not speak highly of his parents but it was sweet to hear him talk about his older siblings.  he truly loved them and they influenced all he accomplished in his life.  his brother jack was the one that taught him how to draw and they created these wonderful toys together.  when he talked about his brother, it brought me to tears.  i know i am not the perfect sibling but hope that i have been a good influence on my brother and sister.

though the story had happy memories, it was also filled with sad stories.  one story that made me sad was maurice's struggle with his homosexuality.  he did live in a different time but he spent most of his life wishing he wasn't gay.  jonze asked him when he stopped beating himself up about being gay and he said never.  when he made the point that he was worried about his career it made even more sense.  people would not be accepting of a gay children's book writer, but luckily his books were viewed on his skill versus his sexuality.  thought he felt like he missed out on a lot of fun, he did find love.  

another sad story was the one about the lindbergh baby.  the story in itself is devastating but the story of a young maurice seeing a photo of the mutilated baby's body in a newspaper was terrifying.  it was even more horrible considering that his family did not believe him and how it scarred him for life (he became obsessed with the case).  i haven't read "outside over there" (i have heard him allude to it in interviews) but saw it as a form of therapy for him to come to terms with the image that was etched into his mind.  and again he brings up another sad fact about childhood, how children probably see horrible images like this but never tell anyone.  it reminded me of how "world weekly news" traumatized me as a child. i mean why was that newspaper allowed near the grocery checkout stand within eyeview of kids shopping with their parents!  thanks to "world weekly news" i was scared that my mother was going to be kidnapped by the werewolf man and that if i swallowed a watermelon seed, a plant would grow in my belly (there was an edition that featured a kid with a vine coming through his belly button).  also bat boy was the most frightening picture ever.  i remember seeing these images on a family trip to san diego and though i was frightened, i never told anyone.  just like sendak shared, kids do experience scary things all the time but how many times do they share it with someone else? i mean i never discussed my "world weekly news" fear until now.  childhood can be scary.

when spike jonze's film adaptation of "where the wild things are" first came out i remember reading a critique calling it dark and scary.  jonze made the point that childhood is dark and scary but no one every really discusses it.  sendak's books show how childhood can be dark because he is all about honesty.  he makes the important point that he was often told he couldn't say this or that to kids but he believed that you can tell kids anything you want, as long as it is honest.  and this is why "where the wild things are" is so great.  it demonstrated how parents and children do act.  we fight and we argue and we have moments of anger but it's all temporary because at the end of all it, our love for each other is tolerant and forgiving.  it is important for kids to know that their parents love is boundless and that we are all human and will make mistakes but they can always count on their family love.

i have not read all of maurice sendak's catalogue but plan on reading them all. he mentioned specific books that i have yet to read and so i put in some requests. sendak was an amazing person and author and i am sure his books will teach me invaluable lessons about life.

i really loved this documentary. if you have not seen it please see it as soon as possible.  your heart will be happier after watching it.