It contains evidence of Sendak\u2019s prodigious imagination and lifelong intellectual curiosity, and offers insight into how Sendak developed his ideas over time.<\/p>\n
The making of \u201cWhere the Wild Things Are\u201d was a journey, and the vivid materials in Sendak\u2019s archive illuminate the level of investment that was required to complete it.<\/p>\n
A years-long process<\/strong><\/p>\n One of the items in the collection is a small, horizontal book dummy dated Nov. 17, 1955, titled \u201cWhere the Wild Horses Are.\u201d As one of the earliest forms of what would become \u201cWhere the Wild Things Are,\u201d the book dummy contains many of the elements that would appear in the final version, including a boy who takes a journey, gets chased by monsters and sails a boat to an island.<\/p>\n But what\u2019s with the horses?<\/p>\n This earliest version includes images of the child pulling the animals\u2019 tails. In response, they kick him into the air \u2013 and out of his clothes.<\/p>\n In interviews, Sendak claimed that, when revising the story, he gave up on horses because he couldn\u2019t draw them. But Sendak spent his life immersing himself in a variety of art styles, from romantic painters\u00a0William Blake<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Domenico Tiepolo<\/a>\u00a0to American cartoonist\u00a0Winsor McCay<\/a>. Sendak possessed immense skill.<\/p>\n So if he wanted to illustrate horses, he probably would have. In fact, in 1955 he handily illustrated \u201cCharlotte and The White Horse<\/a>,\u201d a children\u2019s book authored by Ruth Krauss, with whom he had a longstanding collaborative relationship.<\/p>\n But Sendak must have decided horses weren\u2019t right for this story, and he took time to let his ideas percolate.<\/p>\n The wild things do appear in his other surviving book dummy, which is entirely recognizable as an early stage of the finished book we now know. Appearing eight years after the first dummy, this one, square and slightly larger than the first, shows the evolution of the book\u2019s characters and visual rhythm. The changing borders \u2013 think of the page in which the trees take over Max\u2019s bedroom \u2013 compel the reader to turn the pages.<\/p>\n \u201cI had never seen fantasy depicted in American children\u2019s books in illustrations that were so powerfully in motion,\u201d\u00a0critic Nat Hentoff wrote in the New Yorker<\/a>\u00a0in 1966, a few years after the book\u2019s publication.<\/p>\n Curiosity and creation<\/strong><\/p>\n But what happened during the preceding eight years?<\/p>\n Much of the time was spent focusing on other projects. Sendak illustrated other picture books for his publisher, Harper and Row, and collaborated with Else Holmelund Minarik on her \u201cLittle Bear\u201d series and with Ruth Krauss on books like \u201cI Want to Paint my Bathroom Blue<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n He also published his own picture books during this period, from \u201cKenny\u2019s Window<\/a>\u201d in 1956 to \u201cThe Sign on Rosie\u2019s Door<\/a>\u201d in 1960.<\/p>\n Yet most picture book authors and illustrators work diligently and juggle multiple projects. How was Sendak different?<\/p>\n Unlike illustrators who use a singular style that appears throughout their work, Sendak developed a unique visual approach for each project. He was always seeking out inspiration from other artists whom he admired.<\/p>\n \u201cWild Things,\u201d for example, owes a great deal to the influence of French post-impressionist painter\u00a0Henri Rousseau<\/a>. You can see the influence of Swiss painter\u00a0Henry Fuseli<\/a>\u00a0on \u201cOutside Over There<\/a>\u201d and the influences of British caricaturist\u00a0Thomas Rowlandson<\/a>\u00a0and Czech painter\u00a0Josef Lada<\/a>on the recently published \u201cPresto and Zesto in Limboland<\/a>,\u201d which Sendak created with friend and collaborator Arthur Yorinks.<\/p>\n He also read widely \u2013 he especially loved Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson and John Keats \u2013 and as he worked he played music in the background, choosing songs and albums that reflected his creative moods.<\/p>\n \u201cSketching to music is a marvelous stimulant to my imagination,\u201d he said during his\u00a0Caldecott award speech<\/a>\u00a0in 1964.<\/p>\n And he was always trying to become a better artist; he was, as Yorinks explained in an interview, \u201cconstantly teaching himself.\u201d In the long gestation period between the dummy and the publication of \u201cWhere the Wild Things Are,\u201d Sendak was able to learn a range of new styles, including\u00a0the crosshatching technique<\/a>\u00a0that would appear in \u201cWild Things.\u201d<\/p>\n As Jonathan Weinberg, curator and director of research at The Maurice Sendak Foundation, told us, \u201cI can think of no other artist \u2013 illustrator or otherwise \u2013 who has employed so many different forms of expression, not only over time but often on projects that were in production simultaneously.\u201d<\/p>\n The wild things emerge<\/strong><\/p>\n During the period in which \u201cWild Horses\u201d became \u201cWild Things,\u201d Sendak enlarged the interpretive possibilities of his subject.<\/p>\n Just as Sendak fertilized his imagination with a range of artists and sensory experiences, from Mozart to Melville, the wild things themselves are hybrid creatures that possess qualities that are both human-like and animal-like. They roar but speak English, walk upright but have horns sprouting from their heads.<\/p>\n By drawing and redrawing the creatures, Sendak could play with their expressions and postures, toying with the ways they might move and engage the reader.<\/p>\n The Sendak Collection contains multiple versions of what would become the book\u2019s jacket. Many of them focused on a particular wild thing wearing a striped sweater. In one version, he looks to the side as he waves to the reader.<\/p>\n In another, he creeps out from the underbrush, hands and foot raised in motion.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/files\/262251\/original\/file-20190305-48441-1vw5b1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip\")
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