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Prudery affronted: Maurice Sendak and I Saw Esau.

Article Excerpt
Writing a companion book to Selma Lanes's sumptuous and authoritative The Art of Maurice Sendak (Abrams, 1980) is a daunting undertaking. In The Art of Maurice Sendak: 1980 to Present, published this month by Abrams, Tony Award- and Pulftzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner takes a more personal and meditative approach as he examines Sendak's later picture books as well as his work for the opera stage. November also sees the publication of Sendak and Kushner's picture book Brundibar (di Capua/Hyperion), based on their production of a children's opera originally performed in the Terezin concentration camp. (And in December Sendak makes a cameo appearance in the HBO television production of Kushner's play Angels in America.) Below, we excerpt Kushner's thoughts on I Saw Esau (Candlewick, 1992), edited by Iona and Peter Opie and illustrated by Maurice Sendak.

Traditional children's rhymes have long been an important source of material and inspiration for Sendak. Esau provided a re-encounter with the rhymes in their original state. The book recalls Sendak's early work with Ruth Krauss, in that it catalogues rather than narrates, offers lists rather than stories; Krauss and Sendak, in such books as A Hole Is to Dig, eschewed narrative so as to sink deep into the world of a very small child, a child of an age before extended narrative can be comfortably assembled or assimilated, when counting and listing and the nonsequential amassing of facts are the tasks at hand. Esau is a similarly non-narrative compendium, though intended for somewhat older children....