{"id":4793,"date":"2009-06-10T11:08:58","date_gmt":"2009-06-10T15:08:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=4793"},"modified":"2009-06-10T11:08:58","modified_gmt":"2009-06-10T15:08:58","slug":"wild","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2009\/06\/wild\/","title":{"rendered":"Wild"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

[Image above, “Where the Wild Things Are,” a tribute to Maurice Sendak
\nby elmicro of the deviantArt site. Click the image to see the original.]<\/em><\/p>\n

Today marks Maurice Sendak’s 81st birthday.<\/p>\n

This year also marks the 45th anniversary of the publication of Where the Wild Things Are<\/em>.\u00a0 From 100 Best Books for Children<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

After creating art for almost fifty books by other authors, Sendak took up a project of his own begun in November 1955, a saga called “Where the Wild Horses Are.” But since he couldn’t draw horses very well, he tried to think of another character he might use — eventually focusing on “Wild Things.” That idea brought back childhood memories of his Brooklyn relatives — aunts, uncles, cousins — who would come visiting and eat his family food. They pinched his cheeks and cooed over him, saying, “You’re so cute, I could eat you up.” Sendak brought these relatives and the movie King Kong<\/em> together in his story caldron. As Sendak drew and redrew the Wild Things — at first quite skinny and under-nourished — they gained weight and density.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

The writer’s favorite fan letter reads: “How much does it cost to get to where the Wild Things are? If it is not expensive, my sister and I would like to spend the summer there.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The book’s grip on the popular imagination — at least in the US, among the generations which have grown up since 1964 — boggles the mind. And among artists and illustrators? Pfft: words don’t suffice.<\/p>\n

(For example, just check out, the deviantArt site where thousands of indie\/professional artists display their work online. Do a search on “wild things”<\/a> and you get over 12,000\u00a0 hits, among them the illustration which tops this post: Max giving a Wild Thing as good as he gets.\u00a0 Not all of those hits refer to the book, but a lot — I mean, a lot<\/em> — of them do.)<\/p>\n

Here’s a video of Sendak talking about “his work, childhood, [and] inspirations”:<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

Finally, if you follow such things you probably already know about the forthcoming film version of Where the Wild Things Are<\/em>, from director Spike Jonze and screenwriter Dave Eggers. Here’s the trailer for it:<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Image above, “Where the Wild Things Are,” a tribute to Maurice Sendak by elmicro of the deviantArt site. Click the image to see the original.] Today marks Maurice Sendak’s 81st birthday. This year also marks the 45th anniversary of the publication of Where the Wild Things Are.\u00a0 From 100 Best Books for Children: After creating […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[94,426,53,250,36],"tags":[1271,1272],"class_list":{"0":"post-4793","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-02_in-the-news","7":"category-celebrities","8":"category-movies-media","9":"category-art","10":"category-reading","11":"tag-maurice-sendak","12":"tag-where-the-wild-things-are","13":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6kZSG-wild","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4793"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4793\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4804,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4793\/revisions\/4804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}