Very Far Away
New York: Harper & Brothers, (1957). Single volume, measuring 8 x 6 inches: 52, [4]. Original green pictorial cloth stamped in black, pale green endpapers, original unclipped color pictorial dust jacket. Illustrations printed in black, pink, and grey throughout text. Harper & Brothers review slip laid in. Lightest sunning to spine panel of jacket, a few faint spots to rear panel.
First edition, review copy, of the second children's book written and illustrated by Maurice Sendak, following Kenny’s Window in 1956. Frustrated by his mother’s attention to the new baby, young Martin dresses up as a cowboy and runs away from home, “looking for very far away,” and is soon joined by a group of similarly wistful figures: an old horse, a nostalgic sparrow, and a cat who longs to sing all day. The story of a boy who escapes his domestic routine only to run “all the way home” before nightfall prefigures the plot of Where the Wild Things Are, published six years later. First-issue jacket, priced at $2.00, with four blurbs for Kenny’s Window on rear flap and Robert Galster’s photograph of the young Sendak on rear panel. Hanrahan A28. An exceptional copy of one of Sendak’s scarcest first editions, with original publisher’s review slip.
Price: $1,000.00