My Brother's Book
*Starred Review* In his foreword, Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt describes Sendak’s last, posthumously published book as “something rich and strange.” And so it is. Combining lushly beautiful art in the manner of Blake and Fuseli with a text reconfigured from Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale, Sendak’s richly imagined book offers a magical and mysterious tribute to his beloved older brother, Jack, who died in 1995. The story follows the respective plights of two brothers, Jack and Guy, who are seemingly separated by a new star’s smashing into the earth. Jack is catapulted into a continent of ice and “stuck fast in water like a stone.” Guy, meanwhile, is plunged into the dangerous lair of a bear that threatens to consume him. Will the brothers survive to be reunited in love and peace? Distinguished by its pervasive sense of longing and informed by extraordinary art—some of Sendak’s most beautiful—My Brother’s Book is a celebration of the enduring love of two brothers. One’s first impulse is to marvel at the exquisite art and then to turn to the Shakespearean text to understand how the two seemingly disparate elements harmonize. Inviting reading and rereading, Sendak’s tribute to his brother is also a final tribute to his own genius.      HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Is there a children’s author whose name has been more enduring and recognizable than the late Sendak’s? Grades 10-12. --Michael Cart