Famed children's book author Maurice Sendak, arguably the most important picture book author in history, and who died five years ago, is apparently channeling his inner Tupac Shakur and releasing work posthumously. (Lest you forget, rap legend Tupac died many years ago, but out of his eleven platinum albums, seven were released posthumously. Now, it seems Sendak wants to be as popular in death as in life as well, too.)
According to Publisher's Weekly, in 1990, Sendak was interested in collaborating with the London Symphony Orchestra for a performance of Leoš Janáček’s Rikadla, a 1927 composition dealing with Czech nursery rhymes set to orchestral music, of which he had drawings.
But Sendak had his fingers in multiple projects at the time. His occasional collaborator, Arthur Yorinks, remembers seeing the drawings and having a brainstorm session with Sendak over the work, and how they could turn it into a book. Alas, Sendak became distracted by those other projects lingering around him, and the drawings never saw the light of day with London or anyone else.
Fast forward to 2016, and Lynn Caponera, president of the Maurice Sendak Foundation, was combing through mounds of Sendak's work to throw out, when she stumbled on the drawings. Presto and Zesto in Limboland, the work Sendak and Yorink brainstormed over, that the London Symphony Orchestra hoped for, was rediscovered--and Sendak's work continues, a la Tupac.
A release date for the fall of 2018, published by Michael di Capua Books/HarperCollins, is planned. No word on whether seven other random "lost" books will be found either, but time will tell.
In the meantime, let's remember Sendak when Stephen Colbert visited him shortly before his death, and revel in the illustrator huffing markers and dropping f-bombs:
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