RIP Maurice Sendak

[Azhiri]

"But the wild things cried, "Oh, please, don't go! We'll eat you up, we love you so!"

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/09/bo...ies-at-83.html

Maurice Sendak, widely considered the most important children’s book artist of the 20th century, who wrenched the picture book out of the safe, sanitized world of the nursery and plunged it into the dark, terrifying and hauntingly beautiful recesses of the human psyche, died on Tuesday in Danbury, Conn. He was 83.

The cause was complications of a recent stroke, said Michael di Capua, his longtime editor. Mr. Sendak, who died at Danbury Hospital, lived nearby in Ridgefield, Conn.

Roundly praised, intermittently censored and occasionally eaten, Mr. Sendak’s books were essential ingredients of childhood for the generation born after 1960 or thereabouts, and in turn for their children. He was known in particular for more than a dozen picture books he wrote and illustrated himself, most famously “Where the Wild Things Are,” which was simultaneously genre-breaking and career-making when it was published by Harper & Row in 1963.

Among the other titles he wrote and illustrated, all from Harper & Row, are “In the Night Kitchen” (1970) and “Outside Over There” (1981), which together with “Where the Wild Things Are” form a trilogy; “The Sign on Rosie’s Door” (1960); “Higglety Pigglety Pop!” (1967); and “The Nutshell Library” (1962), a boxed set of four tiny volumes comprising “Alligators All Around,” “Chicken Soup With Rice,” “One Was Johnny” and “Pierre.”

---------------------

“Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters — sometimes very hastily — but this one I lingered over. I sent him a card and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, “Dear Jim: I loved your card.” Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, “Jim loved your card so much he ate it.” That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.” --Maurice Sendak

It doesn't mention in the article, but Sendak was also responsible for Little Bear, a beloved kid's show I'm sure we're all (me and Jalen especially) familiar with.



I'm really sad about this. When I found out I got out my copy of Where the Wild Things Are, the first book I learned to read, and read it for the first time in years. His stories and the Little Bear books/show were truly an important part of my childhood, my dad and I used to read his books together every night.. In the Night Kitchen, Higglety Pigglety Pop, they're all special.

[user472884]

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

nope

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

I'm going to go eat a tube of Little Bear toothpaste in his honor.