the Fractured Fairy Tales!) Alice in Wonderland. Certain inanities appealed to me from childhood-“Rocky and Bullwinkle” (esp. My father was something of a humorous writer and a well-known raconteur and journalist around town (Albany NY) and the Irish side of that largely Irish city was replete with good storytellers.

I suppose I am a curious blend of revolting earnestness and absurdism. I suspect it wasn’t, that Sendak drawings came out of his pen and brush after being fed through his hand onto the paper-but I’ll never know.īut to answer your question. What I was TRYING to get at was did he picture what he was reading as non-artists might (this, then that), or as a film-maker might, in black and white or Technicolor, or-and this is what I was really curious about-did he picture great stories in terms of Maurice Sendak drawings? Was his imagination a free-floating endless scroll of unpublished Sendakiana? I wish I knew. (Is the blue you see in the sky the same blue I see? Experiential miasmas…) I once asked Maurice Sendak what he pictured when he read THE ILIAD, but I had subtly asked the wrong question, and never rephrased it, and then he died, so I don’t know the answer. Gregory: This is the kind of wonderful question that creative people ask themselves and can’t know the answer to. (“ The setting sun was a lumpy clementine…“) Can you tell me about your process? Do you walk through the world differently than non-writers? Melissa: I love your use of language and imagery in Cress Watercress. I am thrilled to share a recent interview with Gregory Maguire about his new book, writing process, and favorite children’s books. It’s a stunningly beautiful story about a fatherless rabbit named Cress who is on a journey to understand her inner world, reflected by her outer world and its stories, with delicious figurative language and precise word choice with characters who are immensely lovable. His next book, Cress Watercress, arrives in bookstores on 3/29/22. He is also the author of several books for children, including the forthcoming Cress Watercress as well as What-the-Dickens, a New York Times bestseller and Egg & Spoon, a New York Times Book Review Notable Children’s Book of the Year. Gregory Maguire is the author of Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, which inspired the Wicked musical.

Gregory maguire author