Grown-ups desperately need to feel safe, and then they project onto the kids. But what none of us seem to realize is how smart kids are. They donโt like what we write for them, what we dish up for them, because itโs vapid, so theyโll go for the hard words, theyโll go for the hard concepts, theyโll go for the stuff where they can learn something. Not didactic things, but passionate things.
Maurice SendakI hate [ebooks]. It's like making believe there's another kind of sex. There isn't another kind of sex. There isn't another kind of book! A book is a book is a book.
Maurice SendakPeter Rabbit, for all its gentle tininess, loudly proclaims that no story is worth the writing, no picture worth the making, if it is not a work of imagination.
Maurice SendakChildren are tough, though we tend to think of them as fragile. They have to be tough. Childhood is not easy. We sentimentalize children, but they know what's real and what's not. They understand metaphor and symbol. If children are different from us, they are more spontaneous. Grown-up lives have become overlaid with dross.
Maurice Sendak