Speaking to the New York Times, Sendak said that modern children’s books are not always “truthful or faithful to what’s going on with children”.
“If there’s anything missing that I’ve observed over the decades it’s that that drive has declined,” said the 83-year-old author, who admitted that he “hadn’t kept abreast” of children’s books and didn’t see that many. “There’s a certain passivity, a going back to childhood innocence that I never quite believed in. We remembered childhood as a very passionate, upsetting, silly, comic business.” Max, the wolf-suited star of Where the Wild Things Are, “was a little beast, and we’re all little beasts”, Sendak said.
Maurice Sendak, who has just had new book Bumble-Ardy published, on today’s children’s books.
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