In just over a month, four works by Maurice Sendak, previously unpublished in Italy, by Maurice Sendak, a creative genius who never bowed to the rules of “political correctness” and managed to be , by turns, rebellious, poetic, witty, dreamlike, disturbing and scary. All these unpublished texts reflect the richness and variety of the author’s themes and the complexity of his style and style.
In the World Out There (1981) is a fable-thriller: it is ideally the last chapter of a trilogy (with Where the Wild Monsters Are and The Night’s Kitchen) of in-depth analysis of the negative feelings of childhood such as anger, fear, loneliness and sense of abandonment. This time with a hyper-realistic, highly detailed and dreamlike style, Sendak paints a dark, shocking and highly tense story: in the absence of the parents, two goblins enter a house and kidnap a newborn girl, taking advantage of a distraction from her older sister. It will be the latter, protected by a yellow cape and armed with a magic horn, who will venture into the “world out there”, a disturbing parallel reality, to save her little sister. The narrative is imbued with symbolism, iconic references and stimulates infinite reflections (even of a psychological nature). Age: 8+
Bombo-Lardo (2011) is the last work published by Sendak during his lifetime; tells of a little pig who never celebrated his birthday in the first eight years of his life; having received a cowboy costume, he decides that it is time to hold a big masquerade party at his aunt’s house, obviously while she is not there… The narrative is steeped in black humor, the drawing appears grotesque and caricatural, and the theme is that of disobedience to the rules of the adult world. Age: 6+
Walnut shells (The Nuthshell library) by Maurice Sendak, published in 1962, arrived on Italian shelves only a few days ago (thanks to Adelphi who is republishing all the great author’s masterpieces): it is a delightful quartet of miniature volumes, collected in a box set, in which Maurice Sendak revisits in a brilliant, ironic and hilarious way four types of books commonly proposed as first reading to girls and boys.
In Alligators galore, Sendak redesigns the traditional ABC through the skilful use of rhetorical figures such as alliteration and onomatopoeia. In the volume entitled One is Johnny – a counting book you learn to count from one to ten and then backwards. In Chicken broth, Sendak enjoys illustrating the months of the year. This time, Johnny, who we have already met, will convince us through a rhyming text that chicken broth is suitable for all seasons. The rhyming fairy tale from the title Piero instead, its protagonist is a contrary Bastian child, who challenges his parents’ patience and even that of a lion. Walnut shells it is not just a milestone in the history of the illustrated book: it is a real miniature, humorous and ingenious manifesto, which appears only apparently subdued and stiff, of a new way of looking at childhood. Age: 5+
 by the genius Maurice Sendak – Whales, ogres, elephants){kind=link}