In a 2009 article published in The Psychologist, Richard Gottlieb, a psychoanalyst based in Phoenix, analyzed the influences and motivations behind Sendak’s illustrations and writing. In a tribute to Sendak on Tuesday, ABC News’ Mikaela Conley highlighted the writer’s ability to portray what kids think and feel, the real and the pretend: They survive - and thrive - via an active fantasy life, for sure.
In a 2002 interview with children’s book historian Leonard Marcus, he declared his life’s work: “The question I am obsessed with is: how do children survive?” ( MORE: Reality Check: Why Some Brains Can’t Tell Real From Imagined)īut his fascination with the inner life of children was undeniable, and he spent his life wondering - aloud and in writing - what makes them tick. Perhaps the most significant is Sendak’s own assertion that he wrote not for children nor for adults. Since Sendak’s death Tuesday at the age of 83, scores of writers have scrambled to divine the importance of his contributions to the pantheon of kid lit. In one lyrical sentence in his classic Where the Wild Things Are, Sendak captured the make-believe world where children live, summing it up with humor and the acknowledgement that a hot meal’s appeal, regardless of age, is pretty irresistible. Follow there anything more evocative of childhood than Maurice Sendak’s description of disgruntled Max - the banished-to-his-room little boy, who has become one of the best-known childhood literary characters of all time - sailing “back over a year and in and out of weeks and through a day and into the night of his very own room”?
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