Today we say mer­ry Christ­mas the Open Cul­ture way, by bring­ing in a piece of work from the late Mau­rice Sendak, the chil­dren’s author and illus­tra­tor who with every­thing he wrote and drew evad­ed the lim­i­ta­tions of that label. Though most of us remem­ber his books Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen from child­hood, when­ev­er our child­hoods hap­pened to be, few­er of us have seen his ani­mat­ed work. Above you’ll find a bit of it rel­e­vant to this time of year: Sendak’s open­ing sequence for Sim­ple Gifts. In it we wit­ness a shoe­less waif’s meta­mor­pho­sis into a Christ­mas tree which attracts and com­forts a pair of sim­i­lar­ly dis­pos­sessed tots. The 1977 anthol­o­gy film col­lect­ed six short films, all on the theme of Christ­mas. But only this first minute and a half comes from the inim­itable mind belong­ing to the man Time called “the Picas­so of chil­dren’s books.” The video then fea­tures Sim­ple Gifts’ open­ing remarks from Colleen Dewhurst, who reflects on and draws a les­son from this brief ani­mat­ed tale: “A per­son gives noth­ing who does not give of him­self.”

via Bib­liok­lept

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch the Ani­ma­tion of Mau­rice Sendak’s Sur­re­al and Con­tro­ver­sial Sto­ry, In the Night Kitchen

The Mind & Art of Mau­rice Sendak: A Video Sketch

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Those prone to using “twee” as a pejo­ra­tive, par­tic­u­lar­ly in con­nec­tion to the films of Wes Ander­son, should lay in a sup­ply of anti­dote before view­ing the ani­mat­ed short, Cab­bit.

Its cre­ators describe the tit­u­lar char­ac­ter as “a charm­ing lit­tle ani­mal spir­it whom (sic) spends its days tea-danc­ing with kin­dred spir­its and explor­ing the won­ders of the nat­ur­al world.”

As in The Lorax, indus­try and the fool­ish humans in its thrall are major bad­dies. But where­as the apoplec­tic Lorax takes an activist stance, Cab­bit drifts along, serene in its tweeds.

As eco­log­i­cal state­ments go, it’s pret­ty mild stuff.

For this view­er, the more intrigu­ing ele­ment is the back sto­ry. In ani­ma­tion terms, Cab­bit is a throw­back, painstak­ing­ly hand drawn with Sharpie mark­ers by a most­ly house­bound Mis­soula artist, who flies under the code name Soo­gie. His crafts­man­ship caught the atten­tion of sound design­er, John Kassab, who saw punk where oth­ers saw twee. Kassab may not pilot a diri­gi­ble or squash pos­sums with his Mod­el T,  but as humans go, he’s pret­ty up on tech­nol­o­gy. With Kassab as pro­duc­er, Soo­gie waged a Kick­starter cam­paign, suc­cess­ful­ly tea danc­ing with kin­dred spir­its who under­wrote the pur­chase of high end dig­i­tal equip­ment. Kass­ab’s next goal is to ush­er the oth­er­world­ly, anthro­mor­phic Cab­bit onto the film fes­ti­val cir­cuit. Til then, it must abide entire­ly with­in the con­fines of this steam­punk world we refer to as the Inter­net.

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is Wes Ander­son­’s #1 Fan.