My time with Maurice Sendak

All nominations for the Sendak Fellowship are anonymous. So when I received a letter from the US with the Sendak Foundation logo on the envelope, I couldn’t really imagine what it was about. The letter explained I’d been shortlisted for a Fellowship residency. It asked for a written piece on why I would like to be selected.

I had left university the previous summer and was working on a number of picture book ideas, but was yet to have any success with getting anything published.

After a long few weeks I received another similar letter giving me the thrilling news that I’d been selected for the month-long Fellowship.

Where the Wild Things Are

In September 2011 I headed for Connecticut and Maurice Sendak’s beautiful country home, where I lived alongside three amazing other Fellowship illustrators for a month. We all worked on our own projects, alongside lengthy informal talks, walks and guidance from the magnanimous and deeply inspirational (and lovingly profane) Mr Sendak.

The house where we stayed was situated in the forest next door to Maurice's residence. An utterly beautiful location, where we were all given our own studio/bedroom space and everything we would need to work during our time there. It wasn’t so much that Maurice offered us any technical advice on our work. He didn’t sit us each down and tell us which pencil mark or colour was wrong with the page we were working on. He would inspire merely with his presence and anecdotal guidance.

Each day one of us would go with Maurice on his daily walk in the woods with his faithful German Shepherd, Herman, and just talk and talk. He was almost exactly 60 years my senior and had experienced a very different publishing world to the one I was likely to know.

Mickey Mouse

Maurice's own house could only be described as a treasure trove. His love for beautiful and creative objects was evident in the things he collected - first editions of American literature, William Blake prints, early Mickey Mouse memorabilia – and he loved nothing more than to bring them out and show them to guests. We would visit his archives where you could find folders of work by illustrators such as Beatrix Potter, Randolph Caldecott and, of course, the earlier work of Maurice himself. He would show us Melville’s writing case, full of ancient pens and say: “… can you believe I own this!” He wanted others to be inspired by these things in the way he was.

During our stay we were also lucky enough to witness him working on his latest title – the posthumously published, My Brother’s Book. He showed us the pages he was working on that would later come together to form the now critically acclaimed final chapter.

The Journey Home

A year later, in October 2012, my first picturebook, The Journey Home, was published by Pavilion Children's Books.

It was in keeping with his deeply committed inspirational nature, that Maurice kept in regular touch with me by phone up until shortly before his death in May last year. Enquiring of my progress, ever encouraging of my art, he was a man of wisdom and magic and ebullient love, and my short but infinite time with him will resonate through my illustration forever.

The Journey Home by Frann Preston-Gannon is published by Pavilion Children's Books.

Frann is shortlisted for the Best Picture Book category in this year’s Waterstones Children’s Book Prize. The winners are being announced this evening (21 March).