By David Kilby, Managing Editor
MONROE — Pictures and stories of big, furry monsters with horns, claws and large noses remind many people of Maurice Sendak’s books, but few people know about the author’s work aside from his classics, “Where the Wild Things Are” and “In the Night Kitchen.”
At the beginning of the month, the Monroe Township Public Library became the first of 35 libraries in the country to offer an exhibit on the work of Mr. Sendak, the Jewish author and artist.
The library received permission and the items for the exhibit from the American Library Association.
Irene Goldberg, director of the library, said the exhibit is there just to expose people to Mr. Sendak, who is much more than an author.
To get the exhibit, the library had to include two adult programs with it.
The two adult programs the library agreed to host were Patrick Rogers’ lecture on Mr. Sendak’s art July 8 and the upcoming presentation on Mr. Sendak’s stage design July 27 at 2 p.m.
The upcoming lecture, “The Stage Design of Maurice Sendak,” will be presented by Chris Jaehnig, associate arts professor at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
Those who attend will see how Mr. Sendak took two-dimensional illustrations and transformed them in to three-dimensional scenery and costumes for the stage, reads the library’s flier for the event. Free lecture tickets are available at the library’s welcome desk.
In addition to writing and creating artwork for more than 100 children’s books, Mr. Sendak designs sets for the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.
Mr. Sendak was born in Brooklyn in 1928. All of his family members were killed in Nazi concentration camps, and the influence of the camps is evident in his artwork.
”These are children’s books, but he couldn’t help himself. It colored everything he did,” Ms. Goldberg said as she explained parts of the exhibit.
Warner Brothers Pictures made the 1963 children’s book classic, “Where the Wild Things Are,” into a movie in 2009, starring Max Records and Catherine O’Hara, but the monsters Mr. Sendak created have been in the memories, or nightmares, of children since the book was published.
Those who visit the exhibit can learn how the monsters have a rather uncanny inspiration.
”When my mother and father came to America, which was just a few years before World War I, their family sent photographs,” Mr. Sendak said once. “All of that was a re-creation of a world I never knew.”
Mr. Sendak received the idea for his monsters from those pictures of his relatives in Europe, who “had terrible teeth and hair pouring out their noses.”
This and much more regarding Mr., Sendak’s inspirations as well as much of his lesser-known works can be discovered at the exhibit, which will be on display until Aug. 19.
