{"id":1197,"date":"2010-02-10T18:21:06","date_gmt":"2010-02-10T22:21:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=1197"},"modified":"2010-03-09T00:24:25","modified_gmt":"2010-03-09T04:24:25","slug":"review-of-making-mischief-by-gregory-maguire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=1197","title":{"rendered":"Review of Making Mischief, by Gregory Maguire"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Making Mischief<\/p>\n

A Maurice Sendak Appreciation<\/em><\/p>\n

by Gregory Maguire<\/p>\n

William Morrow (HarperCollins), 2009. 200 pages.
\nStarred Review.<\/p>\n

Lavishly illustrated with Maurice Sendak’s creations, Making Mischief<\/em> is based on a symposium on Maurice Sendak’s work which Gregory Maguire presented in 2003. He goes into far more depth than I expected, and gives the reader a whole new appreciation of Maurice Sendak as an artist.<\/p>\n

The approach Gregory Maguire takes is much more interesting than a simple chronological summary of Sendak’s work. He begins by discussing Maurice Sendak’s artistic influences, with fascinating examples from his artwork.<\/p>\n

Next, he looks at four motifs that appear throughout Sendak’s work: Flying, reading, children, and other monsters. He approaches Sendak’s life work “as if it were a single creative act,” looking at it as a whole.<\/p>\n

Then he looks at some unifying factors, such as the way his paintings so often look like a scene on a stage, with a traveling ensemble of characters.<\/p>\n

I especially enjoyed the last two chapters. In Chapter Four, he shows us his personal answers to the following question:<\/p>\n

“Suppose all of Sendak’s artwork were hanging in a museum on the corner, and the building caught on fire. You have the chance to save only ten pieces of artwork for posterity. Which ten do you save, dear?”<\/p>\n

The final chapter, Chapter Five, I found especially delightful. He presents the complete text of Where the Wild Things Are<\/em>, illustrated with wholly different illustrations from Maurice Sendak’s work, including eleven different images for the phrase, “and it was still hot.” Almost as much fun as a wild rumpus!<\/p>\n

Buy from Amazon.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Find this review on Sonderbooks<\/a> at: www.sonderbooks.com\/Nonfiction\/making_mischief.html<\/a><\/p>\n

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Making Mischief A Maurice Sendak Appreciation by Gregory Maguire William Morrow (HarperCollins), 2009. 200 pages. Starred Review. Lavishly illustrated with Maurice Sendak’s creations, Making Mischief is based on a symposium on Maurice Sendak’s work which Gregory Maguire presented in 2003. He goes into far more depth than I expected, and gives the reader a whole […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,46,2,42,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-biography","category-nonfiction-review","category-starred-review","category-true-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1197\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}