Today’s wonderfully elaborate Google Doodle pays tribute to beloved children’s author Maurice Sendak, who died last year at age 83. To honor what would have been Sendak’s 85th birthday, the Doodle team created a colorful, animated tour through some of the illustrator’s greatest works.
The Doodle begins, of course, with what is by far Sendak’s best-known book: 1963’s Where the Wild Things Are. The animation also pays homage to his 1970 work In the Night Kitchen, perhaps best known for the controversy that continues to surround it today. (The illustrations feature the toddler-aged protagonist fully naked.) The Doodle, formatted as a spinning wheel, concludes with an apropos nod to the birthday party scene from Sendak’s final work, Bumble-Ardy.
(LIST: A History of Google Doodles)
Though he’ll always be renowned as a brilliant children’s author, Sendak insisted that he didn’t write for children or for adults — he just wrote. In 1972, he said, “I believe there is no part of our lives, our adult as well as child life, when we’re not fantasizing, but we prefer to relegate fantasy to children, as though it were some tomfoolery only fit for the immature minds of the young. Children do live in fantasy and reality; they move back and forth very easily in a way we no longer remember how to do.”
Even if Google Doodles aren’t your usual cup of Internet tea, this one is particularly impressive — and worth a watch. See the wild rumpus in its entirety here:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=UgtEDdumbwo]