You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

Or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hi, this is Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

I'm here today in the second part of a conversation with Maurice Sendak, which God knows I would

like to continue for weeks and weeks, but we'll try and fit all the rest of it in this

half hour.

Maurice Sendak, as I said before, needs no introduction,

and this is the introduction to Marie Sendak,

author of Where the Wild Things Are in the Night Kitchen,

outside over there, the great children's trilogy

that he both wrote and illustrated.

So many illustrated books from God, the Little Bear

books and Ruth Krause's children's poems, the whole is to dig the beloved nutshell library,

his own chicken soup and rice and Pierre.

And so here he is on the occasion of his designing the L.A. Opera Company's Idomeneo, the Mozart Opera, which will be at the Music Center in September, and which we here at Bookworm

look forward to with enormous intensity. I guess I have to ask about that first. Tell me about

the sea monster. Well, no, we can't talk about the sea monster. You won't talk about the sea monster.

No, because it'll be our little theatrical secret, But I'd rather talk about, for a bit or two,

this particular opera, because I began my opera career very late. I was 50, and I knew nothing about

stage designer. Frank Ossar was very brave, and I think deeply preferred a dumb designer to a sophisticated

...