Maurice Sendak: How to Write a Fantasy for Children
“Fantasy makes sense only if it's rooted ten feet deep in reality.”
There have to be elements of anxiety
And mystery in truthful children’s books.
Or, at least,
There have to be in mine.
What I don’t like are formless,
Floating fantasies.
Fantasy makes sense
Only if it’s rooted ten feet deep in reality.
In Where the Wild Things Are
The reality is Max’s misbehavior
His punishment,
And his anger at that punishment.
That was why he didn’t just have a cute little dream.
He was trying to deal with imperative,
Basic emotions.
Then, the fantasy has to be resolved.
If Max had stayed on the island
With the wild things,
A child reading the book
Might well have been frightened.
Max, however,
comes home.
Mind you,
He doesn’t say:
“I’ll never go there again.”
He will fantasize again,
But the hope is that,
Like other children,
He’ll keep coming back
To his mother.
So the book doesn’t say
That life is constant anxiety.
It simply says that life has anxiety in it.
— Maurice Sendak
Among the Wild Things by Nat Hentoff (1966)