Remember that children’s book about a flag pole that Stephen Colbert asked a very grouchy Maurice Sendak to critique for him back in January? Well, in spite of the fact that famed author and illustrator deemed the work “terribly ordinary” (before adding, “the sad thing is that I like it”), I Am a Pole (And So Can You!) is set to be published by Grand Central on May 8. And that’s not all: Colbert will also be releasing America Again: Re-Becoming the Greatness We Never Weren’t, a followup to 2007’s I Am America (And So Can You!), this coming October. “It’s been a lifelong dream of mine to write a children’s book,” the beloved TV host said in a press release. “I hope the minutes you and your loved ones spend reading it are as fulfilling as the minutes I spent writing it.”
In case you missed Colbert’s interview with Sendak when it originally aired, we’ve got both parts after the jump. It’s definitely worth taking a few minutes to watch; Sendak is so delightfully grouchy that he makes the Dowager Countess look a bit like Pollyanna — and then he starts sniffing markers.
[via The Daily Beast]