Martze - Jack Sendak, illus. Mitchell Miller
On the gate was printed: Garonce Bids You Welcome. It looked so inviting that Martze went in. There stood Garonce, the fiercest, meanest-looking dog he had ever seen.
I came across this odd little book at the library and was intrigued, largely because I'd never heard of Jack Sendak before. (According to Wikipedia, he's Maurice's brother.) It's an old book, copyright 1968, and doesn't actually have an ISBN on it (although apparently it's been republished since then). This one contains illustrations which are, according to the dust jacket, "the first published work by twenty-year-old Mitchell Miller." They're sort of faint-looking pencil drawings, in which the characters all have a sort of bored expression, whether they're running from a collapsing tower or riding a giant's shoulders into the ocean.
The story itself is short and bizarre: the boy Martze, when a storm stops soon after he tells it to, is convinced that he is a real magician. But his magic fails to work on the boys who laugh at him, so he decides he needs to find a different town in which to work his magic. On the way he finds a captive giant, a king of a cardboard town, and a place where no children live. It's hard to describe, but has sort of the feel of some Eastern European folk tale, kind of meandering from one strange scenario to the next.
Anyway, since this Sendak was apparently never as wildly popular as his little brother, you may have trouble finding this book. It's got an odd sense of humor which I think some will appreciate but will leave others just scratching their heads.
Fed to jonathan's brain | April 23, 2008
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