(NewsReady.com) – Critics considered Maurice Sendak one of the best children’s book artists of the 20th century. He passed away in 2012, when he was 83 years old. He now has a new book hitting the shelves, almost 12 years after his death.
On February 6, “Ten Little Rabbits” hit the shelves. HarperCollins published Sendak’s third posthumous book. The picture book is about Mino the Magician, who waves his hand, and a rabbit appears. He keeps waving his wand, and bunnies keep appearing. They crawl all over him, and then Mino sends them back to where they came from, one by one. It allows kids to count the bunnies forward and backward, giving them an opportunity to practice their numbers.
The expressions on Mino’s face draws people into the picture book, like so many of Sendak’s picture books have.
Lynn Caponera, the executive director of The Maurice Sendak Foundation, told NPR that Mino and all of the other boys in Sendak’s books depict the author. “Well, he’s Maurice,” she said of Mino. The foundation’s curator, Jonathan Weinberg, said Sendak, who was born to Jewish-Polish parents, created characters with “an ethnic look” just like him.
“Ten Little Rabbits” has big expectations to live up to. Sendak’s other picture books sold more than 50 million copies.
When Sendak died, he didn’t have any heirs. However, Weinberg and Caponera were like his family. They spoke about their close relationship, saying they met him when they were 10 and 11 years old, respectively. Weinberg said Sendak and his partner, psychiatrist Eugene Glynn, were like his “surrogate parents.” Sendak and Glynn lived together for 50 years before Glynn died in 2007 at 81 years old from lung cancer.
Caponera said she is confident Sendak would approve of “Ten Little Rabbits,” which he originally created decades before he died and thought he would include in his 1962 collection of pocket-sized books. Now, it’s finally seeing the light.
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