R.I.P. Maurice Sendak

Author Maurice Sendak won a Caldecott Medal in 1964 for the picture book "Where the Wild Things Are." Most of us grew up with that book and others by Sendak, who is known for adding dark and subversive stories to the mostly sanitary, adult-approved children's books of the time. Sendak died this morning in Connecticut due to complications of a recent stroke.

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.”

Last year, Sendak released “Bumble-Ardy,” the first book both written and illustrated by Sendak in 30 years. A posthumous book, “My Brother’s Book,” is scheduled for release next February. Sendak was 83. Link -via The Daily What

See also: Maurice Sendak’s Pierre With Music By Carole King at NeatoBambino.