Like everyone else you know, we’ve been grieving over the loss of legendary children’s book author Maurice Sendak all week. But our sadness was momentarily lifted when Stephen Colbert aired a few extra outtakes from his outstanding interview with Sendak, which we originally fell in love with back in January. The outtakes are just as hilarious as the sections that made it onto the original program, but they’re also incredibly touching, showing Sendak’s less crotchety, more grandfatherly side. ”I think childhood is a period of great torment,” Sendak says. “We learn all these things — what is and what isn’t, what you can do and what you cannot do, and it’s hard, it’s really very hard.” He goes on to say that the best thing a parent can do for a child is “love him or her… take them for what they are.” Indeed. Yet again, Mr. Sendak, you are dearly missed. … Read More

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. … Read More