Maurice Sendak

For 30-plus years, Maurice Sendak has been creating social commentaries and worlds of wonder. In Sendak stories, animals inhabit a little boy's bedroom, a small boy bakes enough cake to feed the world, an unlikely pair raise a homeless child, and a girl saves her sister from goblins. You probably will find a Sendak book in your child's bedroom, unless yours is as big a slob as mine are. They're there somewhere: Where the Wild Things Are, In the Night Kitchen, Outside Over There, and the fairly new We Are All in the Dumps With Jack and Guy. These are definitely not the Berenstain Bears.

A new exhibit opening at the Rosenbach Museum & Library next Friday may make it easier for parents to explain war to children in a way that they can really relate to: the art of Maurice Sendak, the noted illustrator of children's books. Titled "Dear Mili: Drawings and Watercolors by Maurice Sendak," the exhibit is based on a story by the 19th-century writer Wilhelm Grimm about a young girl's survival in the woods for 30 years after she is sent there by her widowed mother so that she may escape an approaching war. The exhibit will be on display until April 28. The museum, at 2010 Delancey Place, is open Tuesdays through Sundays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission $1.50 for the exhibit.

The best dance film ever made is probably Walt Disney's Fantasia. Not a translation of dance from one medium to another, it defined itself on its own terms. Though it uses no dancers and no choreography in the conventional sense of the words, the 1940 film is a genuine dance experience. Its plot, as it were, is like the plot of many contemporary dances: interpretation of music. But in Fantasia, the figures doing the interpretation are animated creatures that can do what live dancers can never do. Through their magical properties, Fantasia establishes a world of pure fantasy.

CHILDREN'S AUTHOR Maurice Sendak began his life in Brooklyn and lived in Connecticut until his death Tuesday, but his heart — his work — lives on in Philadelphia at the Rosenbach Museum and Library . The museum has more than 10,000 pieces of Sendak's work, spanning his career from the '40s to the early 21st century, and will mount a memorial exhibition in June. Reacting to the beloved author's death, the museum opened its doors for free to the public yesterday and will again Wednesday from noon to 8 p.m. The gallery is exhibiting "From Pen to Publisher: The Life of Three Sendak Picture Books.

Early in World War II, an impressionable boy from Brooklyn - one Maurice Sendak - found himself trying to cope with a world gone mad. "Life stood on its head," he said the other day in a phone chat from his home in Connecticut. Sendak began to portray this topsy-turvy world on sketch pads. The pursuit ultimately led to now-celebrated stories such as "In the Night Kitchen" and "Where the Wild Things Are. " Visitors to two Philadelphia attractions, the Please Touch Museum and the Rosenbach Museum, soon will be able to enjoy Sendak's unique artistic vision in exhibitions drawn from his classic children's books.

Maurice Sendak, the author and illustrator of children's books, is a man who deals in images even more than in words. So it is fair to begin with an image: He is sitting in a straight-backed parlor chair in the Four Seasons Hotel in Philadelphia. His breakfast cereal is uneaten, his Evian bottle unopened, and he has a hand on each knee as if set for takeoff. The windows are behind him and he faces an expensive sofa and a Peaceable Kingdom-esque print that bears the biblical admonition: "A little child shall lead them.

With the poise and the polish of a major world leader, Maurice Sendak was wittily fending off the news media's queries about the Wild Things that inhabit his fantasies and his fiction. Sure, his award-winning picture books are populated by monsters. But they don't frighten Sendak. "I'm so easily scared, if I saw my work as scary, I couldn't go through with it," Sendak said recently. On the other hand, he reminded his interrogators, "children take a great pleasure in being scared.

By Margot Soven On the wall of my office is a poster of Gatsby - not framed by me, but by my son when he was in high school. A fan of the novel, my son even chose a quote from it to accompany his yearbook photo: "Reserving judgment is a matter of infinite hope. " He's not alone. On the last day of my Introduction to Literature class this month, when I said, "Be sure to see the new Great Gatsby ," one student yelled out, "Oh, that's my favorite book!" When I recently went to see the new Gatsby film, I was prepared for a noisy reception, given that the audience was filled with high school students.

Wild things, young and old, will be gathering at the Rosenbach Museum and Library on Sunday afternoon for "Let the Wild Rumpus Start!," an exhibition of Maurice Sendak's original drawings from 1963's Where the Wild Things Are. "Sendak used thousands of fine ink lines on fields of colors. The result has an almost fireworks-like look to it," said Derick Dreher, the museum's director. Sendak won't be there in person, but a wild thing named Moishe will make an appearance. (Moishe is the Yiddish equivalent of Maurice.

From conception through gestation through delivery, Last Dance is an involving work of process art, inviting the audience to witness the birth of "The Selection," a dance piece that made its debut in 1999. In this case, art makes for very strange bedfellows. The parents of this remarkable brainchild are author Maurice Sendak, his partner Arthur Yorinks, and the Pilobolus Dance Theater under the direction of Robby Barnett, Michael Tracy and Jonathan Wolken. Those familiar with Sendak know that, like the Brothers Grimm, he is an artist of the graphically rendered grotesque.

By Margot Soven On the wall of my office is a poster of Gatsby - not framed by me, but by my son when he was in high school. A fan of the novel, my son even chose a quote from it to accompany his yearbook photo: "Reserving judgment is a matter of infinite hope. " He's not alone. On the last day of my Introduction to Literature class this month, when I said, "Be sure to see the new Great Gatsby ," one student yelled out, "Oh, that's my favorite book!" When I recently went to see the new Gatsby film, I was prepared for a noisy reception, given that the audience was filled with high school students.

Our losses remind us of all we've had, all the wonderful people who have moved, are moving, and will move among us. So here's a review of our human blessings, lives completed in 2012, lives that will stay with us for thankful years to come. We can't mention all - such are the riches. A local moment. This town and state lost huge names that cast much light. Longtime Penn State football coach Joe Paterno , 85, passed in the midst of scandal. Dick Clark , 82, host of American Bandstand , will see the ball descend this year - but a long way off from Times Square.

Film New this week: Rise of the Guardians (***1/2 out of four stars) Santa, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny band together in an enchanting movie that seems as though it were cast by a tag team of Maurice Sendak and Walt Disney. - Carrie Rickey Theater War Horse Nick Stafford's Tony-winning play presents the War to End All Wars from the point of view of a horse named Joey. Clever staging, puppets, and the power of suggestion engage audiences in a play that packs a powerful antiwar message.

To be honest, it had long been a dream of Rosenbach Museum curator Patrick Rodgers to acquire a copy of Maurice Sendak's In the Night Kitchen with the little Mickey penises cut out. After all, censorship of the book was part of Sendak history, and the Rosenbach houses the author's papers and materials. Who knew that Stephen Colbert would be the one to fulfill that wish? Or that the lure of Colbert's hip and multitudinous audience, not to mention his defining interviews with Sendak only months before the writer's death in May, would lead the Rosenbach to acquire, as a result of a five-minute July 17 segment of The Colbert Report , a tiny and unlikely little piece of hipster cool?

The Maurice Sendak Gallery is dark, the door closed, and for a moment as you enter the Rosenbach Museum it startles, as if that in itself is a response to the death on May 8 of the artist, who noted, "I think I'm getting out just in time. " But, no, the man at the desk explains, the lights are off to protect the drawings inside, some 60 years old, delicate artifacts, oh so tiny, their wit and philosophy soaring and plummeting, their delving in and marching off brought about with the most casual of tools: a pen, ink, yellowed tape to hold words to the page.

I was moved to tears Tuesday when a colleague phoned to say that Maurice Sendak, the celebrated children's book author and illustrator, had died. Sendak's books have been an important presence in my life for almost as long as I can remember. My very first childhood book-related memory is of my brother's copy of Sendak's most famous book, Where the Wild Things Are, which won the Caldecott Medal in 1964. When my own children came into the world, this is a book I read to them over and over again, partly out of nostalgia but mostly out of a recognition that Sendak's stories and pictures serve to validate the unique and complicated perspective that children have of the world around them.

Maurice Sendak, 83, artist and writer, who told stories about the truth, light and dark, to children and adults alike, died Tuesday in Danbury, Conn. He had had a stroke four days before. Studded with groundbreaking successes such as Where the Wild Things Are (which won the 1964 Caldecott Medal, for the best American picture book for children) and In the Night Kitchen (1970), Mr. Sendak's 65-year career was that of a son of immigrants, a high-school graduate who carved out a singular, permanent place in writing history - and not only for kids.

CHILDREN'S AUTHOR Maurice Sendak began his life in Brooklyn and lived in Connecticut until his death Tuesday, but his heart — his work — lives on in Philadelphia at the Rosenbach Museum and Library . The museum has more than 10,000 pieces of Sendak's work, spanning his career from the '40s to the early 21st century, and will mount a memorial exhibition in June. Reacting to the beloved author's death, the museum opened its doors for free to the public yesterday and will again Wednesday from noon to 8 p.m. The gallery is exhibiting "From Pen to Publisher: The Life of Three Sendak Picture Books.

'I'm not feeling great," Maurice Sendak is saying. "I've been rather sick, to tell you the truth. I can make believe I'm well. " You can hear it in his voice. Sendak, 82, on the phone from his Connecticut home at 3:30 p.m. Friday (pretty much when the night owl's workday gets going), sounds gravelly and stuffy. "I'm old," says the author and illustrator of dozens of children's books, including Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen . "It could be anything.

The 2010 Sendak in Spring Festival, honoring the work of children's author and illustrator Maurice Sendak, will be celebrated on Saturday and Sunday at the Rosenbach Museum and Library. Workshops from noon to 4 p.m. each day will explore the art of storytelling, illustration, spoken word, and bookmaking, taught by Philadelphia storyteller Linda Goss and book artist Jude Robison. From 1 to 3, Wild Things Whirligig, created by Karen Saillant, artistic director of the International Opera Theater, will be performed.