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SAN FRANCISCO — Maurice Sendak was born on the eve of the Great Depression to an immigrant couple living in Brooklyn, N.Y. His dressmaker father provided adequately for the family but couldn’t protect his youngest child from life’s nightmares.
After the sensational 1932 kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindburgh’s infant son, 4-year-old Maurice was terrified he would be snatched from his bed and insisted his father sleep in his room. Later on, he became quite ill with pneumonia and scarlet fever, and, on the morning of his bar mitzvah, the boy learned his Polish grandfather had died in the Holocaust.
Childhood fears, frustrations, insecurities and sorrows stayed with Sendak throughout his life, and he wove those emotions into the picture books he wrote for children.
“When you hide another story in a story, that’s the story I am telling the children,” Sendak once said. “It’s the two levels of writing — one visible, one invisible — that fascinate me most. There’s a mystery there — a clue, a nut, a bolt, and if I put it together, I find me.”
Sendak, now 81, has lived to see his classic 1963 storybook “Where the Wild Things Are” adapted as a live-action movie, directed by Spike Jonze. It’s scheduled to open in theaters Friday.
And his life’s work is the subject of a major retrospective, “There’s a Mystery There: Sendak on Sendak,” at San Francisco’s Contemporary Jewish Museum through Jan. 19.
On display are original watercolors and drawings from more than 40 of Sendak’s books, including “In the Night Kitchen,” “Chicken Soup With Rice” and “Kenny’s Window,” along with his sketches, work materials and extensive video interviews on touch-screen monitors.
The exhibition was organized by the Rosenbach Museum & Library in Philadelphia, the only repository of Sendak’s work in the world.
“He’s illustrated 100 books,” says Patrick Rodgers, the Rosenbach’s traveling exhibitions coordinator, “and while he usually only writes for children, he’s illustrated for (Leo) Tolstoy and a lot of other greats in mainstream literature.
“So, what we wanted to do with this show is to treat him holistically, to have the Tolstoy pictures and the ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ pictures there. Every piece of Sendak.”
As a children’s author, Sendak subscribes to the idea that make-believe is essential for surviving childhood.
In “Where the Wild Things Are,” Max’s mother is fed up with her son’s loud shenanigans, and calls him “Wild Thing!” And when he shouts, “I’ll eat you up!” she sends him to bed without supper.
Then Max sails away on a wondrous adventure, during which he encounters the monstrous Wild Things and tames them with a hearty “BE STILL!”
In that moment, Sendak allows him, and all children, to express and tame their own wildness.
“It was the first book to say to kids that it’s OK to be wild,” says Rodgers, “and it made concrete the fact that in Max’s relationship with his mother that there will be baseline love and forgiveness.
“It’s a groundbreaking book because it’s so unruly. You know it can get you in trouble, but you do it anyway. It was something kids learned, that wildness has its place.”
Sendak based the “Wild Things” on his memories of terrifying relatives who dined with his family when he was young:
“They smoked cigars, their teeth were terrible, and they had hairs pouring out of their noses. ... And waiting for my mother to get all the food ready — and her being late — meant these people could eat you,” Sendak says.
“He always tried to make children more complex than other writers did,” says Rodgers, “but he really went deep, and he wasn’t afraid to go scary-deep, to bring out things that scared children, and emotions like anger. In that way, he was iconoclastic.”
“Where the Wild Things Are,” winner of a Caldecott Medal, is one of the best-selling American books of all time.
It’s a favorite of Luc Agosta, who teaches children’s literature at California State University, Sacramento.
“Where the Wild Things Are” is one of the most important picture books ever written,” he says. “I don’t think it’s been surpassed for subtlety and appropriateness for young children. ... Sendak writes about universal childhood challenges in 265 words. It’s a miraculously brief little story with a perfect accompaniment: pictures.”
Agosta believes it’s Sendak’s best work.
“They’re all great,” he says, “but this revolutionized American picture books. Every picture is deep and rich and complex. And Max figures out that someone (his mother) can be angry with him and still love him.”
John Boe, who taught children’s literature, along with fairy tales and parables, for many years at the University of California, Davis, sees “Where the Wild Things Are” as a “more modern take on the subversive side of children’s literature.
“People got upset. It was mostly a groundbreaker because it was so well done, both the story and the drawings. Dr. Seuss (‘Cat in the Hat’) had a subversive side but was not as artful.
“Kids could identify with it, and it captured the imagination of a generation of 3- and 4-year-olds: ‘I’m a wild thing!’ What you do as a parent is try to domesticate children. Parents say, ‘You can’t scream or be wild,’ and this book says, ‘Oh, yes, you can.’”
