A Happy Year to Be Grimm
A look at this year's illustrated children's books suggests that Gresham's law may have gone over the rainbow and mysteriously reversed itself. For once, the good appears to be driving out the bad. Specifically, the good is the republication of some of the most popular illustrators of the past. There are reissues of John Ruskin's King of the Golden River, brief selections from Kate Greenaway's 1881 Mother Goose and an edition of Great Swedish Fairy Tales by John Bauer. Among the best reissues, too, are some of Arthur Rackham's Grimm's Fairy Tales, and a collection of N.C. Wyeth's paintings and illustrations, including such children's classics as Treasure Island, Kidnapped and The Last of the Mohicans . These are joined by books by the occasional contemporary artist, like Peter Spier, with a fondness for history and artistic craftsmanship.
No one can be sure whether this windfall for young readers is due to chance, publishers' desire to move with the current run on nostalgia or to a natural re-emergence of a need for detailed illustrations and stories with beginnings, middles and endings. There is one hard fact that may partly account for fine reprints with handsome pictures. Since the Government cutback on book-buying funds for libraries, which account for as much as 65% of children's book sales, the market is shrinking. This year alone, juvenile-book divisions have cut back their output by 26%. Redoing a classic can be an easy way to sure value.
Terror and Wonder. Through all the golden retreads and business uncertainty shines The Juniper Tree, a splendid mixture of the old and new. Essentially, the package is 27 Grimm fairy tales published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in two boxed volumes for $12.95. Four tales were translated by the late poet Randall Jarrell. The remaining 23 are the work of the novelist Lore Segal . The illustrations—one per story—were done by Maurice Sendak, who at 45 is the Little King of the children's book world.
Yet The Juniper Tree is not really a children's book. Mrs. Segal has succeeded in restoring to Grimm the passion, terror and wonder that had been bowdlerized in nearly all the English translations since they first appeared in 1823. Indeed, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm did not have children much on their minds when they sent friends and relatives throughout rural Germany to collect verbatim 210 tales that they edited and published between 1812 and 1815. The Brothers Grimm were scholars and linguists. Their bedtime stories were Ur-texte in the marshy land of Indo-European folklore.
The Juniper Tree even has the compact look of early 19th century German books. Unlike the platter-sized Victorian English editions of Grimm, the two Juniper volumes are small. Sendak's pen-and-ink drawings, executed to scale, measure only 3½ inches by 4½ inches. But like Dürer's Little Passion of Christ—an influence Sendak gladly acknowledges—the effect is monumental. Sendak tricks the eye. Rabbits, crows, cats, dogs, devils, skeletons, peasants, princesses loom enormously from the small page. Menace, ecstasy, mirth and wisdom fill the eyes of the animals, as well as such familiar characters as Rapunzel and Snow White.
In order to pack the richness of these tales into his illustrations, Sendak spent years soaking himself in myth and lore. He studied German and traveled to the mountains and forests where German children hear the originals. During this time, Sendak and Segal winnowed their favorite stories from the original 210. "By the time I was ready to draw," says Sendak, "I felt that the stories were my own." Indeed, he even put his German shepherd Erda into Hansel and Gretel.
It is just such painstaking possession of his materials that earned Sendak his reputation. In 20 years, he has illustrated and/or written more than 70 books. He has won every important children's book prize in the U.S. In 1970, he became the first American illustrator ever to be awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Medal. Sendak's books sell by the hundreds of thousands all over the world and are read by children in Arabic, Japanese and Afrikaans.
Sendak has spent most of his life sitting home alone and drawing. His work is profoundly personal, not to say passionate, and he never condescends to children, as he puts it, "those poor midget people who are supposed to have only half a brain." The long climb began in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1937 when Sendak was nine. He and his older brother Jack wrote and illustrated books that they hand-lettered, decorated and bound with tape. By the time he was in high school, he was illustrating homework instead of doing it. Afternoons and weekends were spent working for All American Comics, where he adapted Mutt and Jeff strips for comic books.
To the Top. After high school, Sendak took a job with a Manhattan window-display house, where he constructed papier-mache and plaster models, including Snow White and the seven dwarfs. "It was the schlock of the 1930s that made up my creative mentality," says Sendak. He continues: "Two years ago, I saw Walt Disney's Pinocchio and loved it, even though the Blue Fairy looked like Joan Bennett and Cleo the Goldfish looked like a drag queen."
In 1951, Sendak's first published illustrations appeared in a children's book called The Wonderful Farm. Success started a year later when he illustrated Ruth Krauss's popular A Hole Is to Dig. But it was the books he both wrote and illustrated that moved him to the top of the anemic children's book field. Most widely read is Where the Wild Things Are . It is the story of naughty Max, who is sent to bed supperless for, among other things, chasing the dog with a fork. Clad in his "wolf pajamas," Max petulantly transforms his bedroom into a jungle and sets off to become King over a race of easily cowed creatures who seem to be the offspring of the Minotaur and a Teddy bear.
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