Maurice Sendak - Caldecott Author

            The Caldecott Medal is an award that is awarded each year to an illustrator of the most distinguished American picture book for children by the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association. The award was named in honor of Randolph J. Caldecott, a nineteenth-century English illustrator. The award was originally created as another version of the Newbury Medal. Although the Newbury is awarded to the "most distinguished American children's book" of the previous year, the Caldecott is awarded specifically to illustrators" (Caldecott Medal, 1987). .
             Maurice Sendak is the Caldecott author and illustrator that I chose for this assignment. He was born on June 10, 1928, in Brooklyn, New York. As a boy, Sendak and his older brother used to write stories. They then illustrated them and bound them into little books. Many of his stories were inspired on his childhood there (Maurice Sendak's Biography). Sendak illustrated about 80 children's books, including about 20 he wrote himself. Some books by Maurice Sendak are Nutshell Library, Very Far Away, In the Night Kitchen, Bumble Ardy, Outside Over There, Chicken with Rice, Alligators All Around, Seven Little Monsters, Where the Wild Things Are, and so much more. He won the Caldecott award in 1964 for the book Where the Wild Things Are (Solheim, 1991). This paper will give some perspectives of reviews, it will show how the Sendak's work fits the criteria outlined by the Caldecott committee, the paper will also compare the award-winning book (Where the Wild Thing Are) to other books by the Sendak, and my personal response of the book. Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are was published in 1963. Brian O' Doherty of The New York Times, called Sendak's work, "disguised in fantasy, springs from his earliest self, from the vagrant child that lurks in the heart of all of us" (Sendak, 1963). Indeed this book did just that it captured the childhood young fantasies of young adolescences.