Maurice Sendak is known world-wide for the picture books he wrote and illustrated, such as In the Night Kitchen and Where the Wild Things Are, and now he’s come out with the first book he’s both written and illustrated in 30 years. It’s called Bumble-Ardy and he told Vanity Fair he was inspired by Giuseppe Verdi:
His glory was in his 80s. A new librettist, Arrigo Boito, came into his life, and he said, ‘Look, Verdi, you can compose better than you’ve done.’ The two operas they collaborated on, Otello and Falstaff, are brilliant.
Dave Eggers, who wrote the Vanity Fair article, says Sendak took comfort, too, in the composer’s famously difficult disposition:
Verdi was malcontent and brooding, and that made me feel better. You can’t write masterpieces in your 80s and be happy too.
The new book is about a pig whose parents never give him a birthday party the first eight years of his life, and then they’re eaten. He goes to live with an Aunt who throws a party for him on his ninth birthday and it goes totally out of control.
Sendak says, “This is obviously the work of a man with dementia, but I’m very happy with it.”
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