Russell Saunders

Russell Saunders is the ridiculously flimsy pseudonym of a pediatrician in New England. He has a husband, three sons, daughter, cat and dog, though not in that order. He enjoys reading, running and cooking. He can be contacted at blindeddoc using his Gmail account. Twitter types can follow him @russellsaunder1.

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15 Comments

  1. Damn, that’s awful. Have you seen his recent interview with Stephen Colbert? Probably not appropriate to show your son, but it’s one of the funniest things I’ve seen lately.

  2. One of the biggest fights Maribou and I got into in the last five years was over the movie version of Where the Wild Things Are.

    Thanks, Mr. Sendak. Your stuff is worth fighting over.

    • Oh, now I’m terribly curious about the details.

      Actually, I’d nominate the movie version of “WTWTA” for my previous post.

      • I emotionally abandoned the movie after Max bit his mom and checked out when he ran out of the house. After that point, I hated the movie and just sat there.

        Maribou, however, thought that they correctly and properly captured the emotional resonance of the book and, more importantly, of being a kid.

        • I think it captured the emotional resonance of being a kid pretty well. I think it whiffed a bit on the book. I think it muddied things by involving the mother’s issues in the plot, and also failed to capture Max’s longing to return home for its own sake. It felt more (to me, at least) like he was fleeing the Wild Things, rather than returning to his mother.

          • I agree. The book is brilliant for capturing a temper tantrum, rage, and subsequent cooling down from a child’s point of view. The movie got the rage, but the cooling down was unnecessarily complicated and lesson-y.

    • One of my best jokes ever: The “Where the Wild Things Are” screenplay was half-written by Dave Eggers, so the movie will be between one-quarter and three-quarters good.

  3. I was not aware of his passing until I saw it here. I am quite sad to hear about it.

    Wild Things was one of my very favorite books as a kid, and both it, Night Kitchen, Chicken Soup With Rice and Pierre: A Cautionary Tale were a favorite of both boys. They requested Wild Things and Night Kitchen at bed time so many times, in fact, that now years later I’m pretty sure I can recite them both by heart. Even those books that he did not write but that he illustrated, (Little Bear, What Can You Do With a Shoe?), seemed to be perennial favorites. Whether this was because of the illustrations or that he was good choosing partners to work with I’m not sure.

    To my knowledge, Wild Things is the first real children’s book that dealt with children that were neither at their most sweet, nor tried to teach a corrective lesson for those that weren’t. I note that talks about the movie are already happening above. For my own part, I remember thinking that the movie was brilliantly done, and captured the essence of the book in a way the other recent classic kid book movies don’t bother trying… and that spending that much time inside of a child’s head during a tantrum, especially one done so accurately, was a fairly miserable way to spend two hours. I was as glad when that movie ended as I was when one of my boy’s tantrums finally petered out.

    My boys aren’t nearly as young as Russell’s, and I doubt they will have any interest whatsoever in reading WIld Things tonight, even under the circumstances. But I think I’ll still pull it out and read it myself.

  4. I probably just going to read the comments here, as anything I contribute while either A) already have been said by someone else better than I have said it OR B) be so overly verbose.

    Wait a minute… how is that different than anything else?

    RIP Maurice. The only thing more impressive than your impact on children’s literature was your impact on the various children and adults who were fortunate to indulge in your world.

  5. There is a heartbreaking 40 minute video of Mr. Sendak on Hulu.

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