Lively enchantments from Leonardo to Sendak
There are illustrators and illustrators. But there is only one Maurice Sendak. His drawings for Grimm fairy tales and his million-copy bestseller, Where the Wild Things Are (1963), unfolded the primary metaphors of dreams; In the Night Kitchen (1970) fused Walt Disney, Laurel and Hardy, the comic strips of Winsor McCay and the reassuring images of bread and bed; Outside Over There (1981), the story of an airborne young heroine, had the enchanting quality of classical ballet. After that, Sendak's interests turned to the stage, and he designed the sets and costumes for Leos Janacek's opera The Cunning Little Vixen, as well as operatic adaptations of his own works. It is the theater that informs Sendak's illustrations for E.T.A. Hoffmann's Nutcracker (Crown; $19.95). This is not the customary sugarplum rendition. As the artist points out in his introduction, the Christmastime ballet was based on a version of the tale by Alexandre Dumas, "smoothed out, bland and utterly devoid of the weird, dark qualities that make it something of a masterpiece." With characteristic wit and technical wizardry, Sendak has restored those qualities. Marie, journeying from childhood to the altar, old Drosselmeier the taleteller and Nutcracker himself are no longer marzipan creations. In Ralph Manheim's vigorous new translation, mice and soldiers, clowns and children speak out as never before, and Sendak has found pictorial equivalents for their idiosyncrasies. The illustrations will be on deposit at the Rosenbach Museum and Library of Philadelphia, which owns Tenniel's original drawings for Alice in Wonderland. A fitting destination: last century's classic has been joined by a modern candidate for that status.
Mitsumasa Anno has been called the Escher of Japan because of his ability to trick the eye and educate the mind. In Anno's Flea Market (Philomel; $11.95), two old peasants wheel a cart across a medieval square. Horseless carriages suddenly appear in the background. A stagecoach is on display, and African explorers have arrived with a cache of ivory tusks. In Anno's crowded canvas, allusions are everywhere: the novels of Robert Louis Stevenson, the paintings of Monet, the films of Rene Clair reach across the years. With his panoramic, limitless cast, this flea market constantly renews itself and seems, unlike the reader, incapable of growing up or growing old.
For several decades, New Yorker Cartoonist William Steig, 78, has devoted himself to diverting children as well as adults. His latest work, CDC? (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; $6.95), tells jokes by using what seem to be isolated letters and digits. At first glance the pages hold pure nonsense: two small boys watch a television set; below them is the legend "R T-M S B-N B-10." But when the letters and number are pronounced, young readers can crack the code: "Our team is bein' beaten." A Martian has descended from a spaceship. The line explains, "N-M-E L-E-N." A doctor holds aloft a test tube and announces, "I F D Q-R!" The whimsical drawings and ingenious punch lines are M-U-S-N from the beginning to D N.