This is the week my childhood dies in chunks, apparently

[anagramofbrat]

This terrifying image is one of the stage sets for the ballet Nutcracker, designed by Maurice Sendak. His designs and sketches for the show were incorporated into a handsomely bound edition of the actual story "Nutcracker" by E.T.A. Hoffman, which I received as a Christmas present as a kid, read a couple of times and refused to open again for a couple of years because all the very... toothsome... illustrations utterly terrified me.

(As an aside, this was also my first audiobook - six cassette tapes worth of Christopher Plummer (!!!) reading the story and scored with Tchaikovsky's suite.)

Maurice Sendak's books and illustrations continue to terrify me now that I'm grown, but it's a more delicious sort of terror, the sort that remembers what it felt like to be scared of the monsters in the closet or under the bed, but now knows they either don't exist or are harmless.

He will be missed. :(

Comments

[horizonchaser.livejournal.com]

:( I remember that book, it was gorgeously grotesque. I loved it.

[retsuko.livejournal.com]

For me, it was the melting (ice) baby brother in Outside Over There, but that page is a close second.

What a tremendous talent he was!

[breakableheart.livejournal.com]

That set is in Seattle and I've seen it IRL! :D

Thanks for the stories, sir. My favorite is In The Night Kitchen. Milk's in the batter!

[rhipowered.livejournal.com]

omg how could I have forgotten that? The book made my childhood Christmases amazing.