Wild Things Exhibition Guide

Nutshell Library
1962
Set of four books
New York: Harper & Row, 1962. © 1962 by Maurice Sendak

Neighborhood Kids

The kids in Maurice Sendak’s childhood neighborhood in Brooklyn inspired many of his characters. He recalled, “They were just Brooklyn kids, old before their time … Most of them were Jewish, and … had—some of them anyway—a kind of bowed look, as if the burdens of the world were on their shoulders.” The kids in Nutshell Library (1962) and The Sign on Rosie’s Door (1960) could sometimes be bratty and intense. Like real kids, they expressed a range of complex emotions.

Dummy for One Was Johnny
1962
Watercolor and ink on paper
New York: Harper & Row, 1962. © 1962 by Maurice Sendak

Dummy for Pierre
1962
Watercolor and ink on paper
New York: Harper & Row, 1962. © 1962 by Maurice Sendak

Maurice Sendak was a master of the small-format book. Part of his bookmaking process was creating small dummies, or mockups, of the complete book. Here, he would arrange text and images to get a better sense of what the final book would look like, editing and rearranging elements until he found the right layout

Final Art for Alligators All Around
1962
Watercolor and ink on paper
© The Maurice Sendak Foundation

With Alligators All Around, Sendak gave kids an alphabet book with something more to do than just recite their ABCs. He explained, “My alligators aren’t teachers … They do the kinds of things that all my children do.”

One of these things, “imitating Indians,” invited a popular type of play for non-Native American kids in the 1960s, a time when schools prohibited Indigenous children from practicing their cultures in school. Today we understand that engaging in such behavior and portraying caricatures of Native people for entertainment is harmful and perpetuates inaccurate stereotypes.

If you want to know a secret, knock three times.

The Sign on Rosie’s Door
1960
Book
New York: Harper & Row, 1960. © 1960 by Maurice Sendak.

The Sign on Rosie’s Door, 1960

Since he was a young boy, Maurice Sendak enjoyed looking out the window at children playing in his neighborhood. In his early 20s, he loved to sketch Brooklyn kids and write down the dialogue he caught on the street. He was particularly taken with the charisma of a girl named Rosie, whose imagination and talent for entertaining the kids in his neighborhood became the inspiration for The Sign on Rosie’s Door.

Ultimately all of Sendak’s heroes owe her a debt. He said, “Pierre … could be Rosie playing Pierre!—and it was only a short step from Pierre to Max of Where the Wild Things Are. A mere change of sex cannot disguise the essential Rosieness of my heroes.”

Rosie Sketchbook
1950
Ink on paper
© The Maurice Sendak Foundation

Sendak’s earliest reference to Rosie appears in this homemade sketchbook. He remembered, “We never officially met; once, however, when we passed in the street, she saluted me with a ‘Hi, Johnson!’ Bewildering, but typical Rosie. She made me up on the spot.”

My name is Rosie. I am a star!

Really Rosie Chelsea Theater Center Poster
1980
Poster
© The Maurice Sendak Foundation

Really Rosie

The theatrical character Sendak based on a girl in his old Brooklyn neighborhood could not be confined to his 1960 book, The Sign on Rosie’s Door. In 1975, he made her the central hero of an animated television special, Really Rosie. Here, she leads the playful kids from Nutshell Library through a series of musical scenarios on their front stoops.

Sendak worked with a team of animators, but his hand is in many of the animation cels, which he frequently edited or enhanced. Singer-songwriter Carole King wrote and sang the music, and the show inspired a beloved 1980 off-Broadway musical that continues to be performed across the United States.

Really Rosie
“Believe Me” and “Chicken Soup with Rice” Episodes
1975
Animation excerpts
Duration: 5 min. 45 sec., with sound.
CCO 1.0 Universal

Watch excerpts from Really Rosie, Sendak’s animated collaboration with singer-songwriter Carole King, which features Rosie and the Nutshell Kids.

Author: Frank R. Stockton (1834–1902)
Illustrator: Maurice Sendak
The Griffin and the Minor Canon, 1st Edition
1963
Book
New York: Harper & Row, 1963. © 1963 by Maurice Sendak.

The Griffin and the Minor Canon, 1963

American novelist Frank Stockton’s tale from 1885 portrays a mythical creature’s admiration for a hardworking, low-ranking clergyman and his selfless devotion to the ignorant and ungrateful people of “a quiet town of a faraway land.” This distant variant of Beauty and the Beast gave Maurice Sendak wonderful opportunities to draw a flamboyant winged monster in various situations, telling the story of an existential friendship between two beings that couldn’t be more different. Its focus on a friendly monster foreshadowed Where the Wild Things Are.

Final Art for The Moon Jumpers
1959
Watercolor on board
© The Maurice Sendalkk Foundation

The Moon Jumpers

The Moon Jumpers, written by Janice May Udry, features children playing by moonlight. Some of Sendak’s richly colored full-page images, without words, are precursors to the rumpus scenes in Where the Wild Things Are, which he created shortly after.