Happy Birthday to Sendak!

Maurice Sendak's birthday is this week! He is dead, but it's still his birthday.

A famous opening:

The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind and another his mother called him WILD THING! and Max said I'LL EAT YOU UP! so he was sent to bed without eating anything....

Smart because it gets right inside Max's head. It doesn't judge Max. Sometimes, you're having a small fit of creativity, and you don't consider all the consequences. And then you say something impulsive. Who hasn't been there?

Form matches content. The rambling syntax matches the rhythms in Max's mind. Also, the refusal to explain *why* the wolf suit comes out and *why* the mischief ensues--that refusal of explanation seems to capture something about childhood, if you ask me. If you're a wound-up child, you're not considering cause and effect. Action is simply *happening* ....

All that--captured in a sentence! A sentence in a kid's book. I'm happy Sendak did the work that he did, in his time on the planet.

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