Giuseppe Verdi in the attic...in the rain

Yesterday afternoon was one of those rainy times when it felt just right to settle in with the latest issue of the Horn Book Magazine.

Of course I wanted to take a look at “Project Child’s Play,” by Hamline’s own Betsy Thomas, in which Heidi moderates as Peter Rabbit, Madeline, and Pinocchio judge new “looks” created for some of our favorite children’s book characters by some of our favorite book characters—Cinderella, Eeyore, Puss in Boots. Read it and laugh. It “Could not [be] more fabulous!”

And there’s a nice review of Ron’s Now Playing:Stoner & Spaz II.

And, since it was still raining, I went to Leonard Marcus’s interview with Maurice Sendak about his new book Bumble- Ardy. Sendak is as crusty as ever—and as stimulating.

What really stood out for me in this interview was the varied combination of influence and circumstance that resulted in Bumble-Ardy. Though the book is about a party, it did not come from an excess of happiness in Sendak’s life. Instead, he said, “It was a very difficult time. I was working on it when my partner and friend was dying of cancer…Eugene died, and then I had bypass surgery. I was doing the book to stay sane….”

Also important to Bumble-Ardy was a book Sendak was reading on the Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi. Verdi was partly important to him because the composer produced two of his best operas after he turned eighty. This fact spurred Sendak to try for “something extraordinary” at this time in his life. There was more-- Sendak suggests the palette for this new book is “Verdi-esque.” He goes on, “Verdi was such an enormous help to me as I worked on the book.”

So we have: a miserable, grieving time in the writer’s life and Giuseppe Verdi. Then add in Sendak’s memories of Coney Island, his own childhood (of course), his continuing “deep feeling for children who are in dire trouble,” and maybe even the personality of Ursula Nordstrom.

This interview is a reminder that, though we aren’t, and shouldn’t be, aware of it while we are writing, our books are like our dreams, made up of the crazy variety that’s stored in the mental attic. Nothing is wasted.