Maurice Sendak and Other Childless Writers of Children's Fiction

Yesterday on Fresh Air Terry Gross played her recent telephone interview with Maurice Sendak, now age 83, on the occasion of the publication of his new book, Bumble-Ardy, the story of an orphaned nine-year-old pig who has never had a birthday party.  Terry asked Sendak if he had ever wanted children, and he said no, that he felt that the incredibly hard work of taking care of children would have interfered with his deep creative process and alone time for introspection and reading.  He told Terry in the interview that he would feel the same way even in today's more liberal climate where gay parents with children is more acceptable than when he was young.  He added, though, that he has always had a fantasy daughter, a helpful person in her late 30s or early 40s who would take care of her Dad in his old age, and he emphasized to Terry that he was always very clear that this was a fantasy.  

Sendak is not unusual as a childless author of children’s literature.  Nor is he alone in having a fantasy child.  Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss) and his wife Helen, who was infertile due to surgical removal of both ovaries early in their marriage, had a fantasy daughter they named “Chrysanthemum-Pearl.”  According to Geisel’s biographers, Judith and Neil Morgan, when friends bragged about their children, Geisel would recount whatever the amazingly clever and precocious Chrysanthemum-Pearl had just accomplished.

Hans and Margaret Rey, the husband-and-wife authors of the Curious George books, were also childless, and in the absence of children, Curious George began to acquire more and more reality in the authors’ lives.  Their friend Annemarie Roeper, giftedness educator, told us that they became increasingly distressed when they were working on their last book, Curious George Goes to the Hospital (1966).  The idea that George might actually be ill enough to require hospitalization led them to revise the manuscript multiple times, ultimately having him swallow a puzzle piece rather than suffer from a serious injury or illness.

Some writers of children’s books never married and were childless by situation, including Louisa May Alcott, Lewis Carroll, Hans Christian Andersen, and J.M. Barrie, and some, like Beatrix Potter, the author of Peter Rabbit, married beyond the average childbearing age.  Eleanor Porter, who wrote Pollyanna, and Kate Wiggin, author of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, were infertile, and each wrote about childless women and orphaned or abandoned children, and  Pollyanna and Rebecca, in fact, are both adopted.

Some of the greatest writers of children’s fiction, including Maurice Sendak, were childless, and their creativity and generativity allowed them to leave gifts like Where the Wild Things Are to the next generation, and the next, and the next. . . .