Author Maurice Sendak, a forever favorite of children around the world for his magical stories and inventive illustrations — including his classic Where The Wild Things Are — died on Tuesday at the age of 83.
His publisher said Sendak, who had a long history of heart trouble, died in Danbury, Connecticut, after complications from a recent stroke.
Critics and admirers have said it is impossible to imagine children’s literature without Sendak, whose whimsical works penned throughout a 60-year career have been read by millions and translated into dozens of languages.
Photo: EPA / Rosenbach Museum and Library
Playwright Tony Kushner has called Sendak “one of the most important writers and artists ever to work in children’s literature.”
“In fact, he’s a significant writer and artist in literature. Period,” Kushner said.
In Where The Wild Things Are, Sendak’s 1963 masterpiece, a little boy named Max, as a punishment for misbehaving, is sent to his room without supper by his mother.
Max is transported to a make-believe world inhabited by fearsome monsters, whom he tames before making his way back home again — with supper waiting for him after all.
Sendak won the Caldecott medal, the highest honor in US children’s literature, for the book, notable for its terrifying yet oddly lovable monsters.
“If Max were not in control of them, they could indeed be in control of him,” Sendak said in an interview rebroadcast recently on National Public Radio.
“The fun of that book,” Sendak told NPR, “is the perilous tightrope between him being a little boy, very vulnerable to these huge creatures, and the absurdity of his having control over them by staring into their yellow eyes.”
Sendak was born in Brooklyn, New York on June 10, 1928, to Polish-Jewish immigrant parents. A sickly child, he turned at a young age not only to reading, but to penning and sketching his own stories.
At the age of 12, he went with this family to see the Walt Disney movie Fantasia, which inspired him to create his own inventory of fictional characters. He said that writing as a child saved him from an unhappy, stifling childhood raised by too-strict parents.
“I was expected to be a decent child... and to just shut up and be a quiet kid. I hated them [his parents] for a long time, but I don’t anymore because God knows, it’s a blessing to have a quiet kid,” he told the US radio broadcaster.
As an adult, Sendak started his career as a freelance book illustrator, creating the illustrations for nearly 50 children’s books, including the acclaimed Little Bear series.
Other perennial favorites are Really Rosie, In the Night Kitchen, Outside Over There and Pierre, which is about a child who always says “I don’t care.”
In addition to the Caldecott, Sendak has been honored with a Newbery medal, the international Hans Christian Andersen Award, a National Book Award, the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award and a National Medal of Arts.
He also created memorable set designs for numerous leading US ballet and opera companies.
The Philippine Department of Justice yesterday labeled Vice President Sara Duterte the “mastermind” of a plot to assassinate the nation’s president, giving her five days to respond to a subpoena. Duterte is being asked to explain herself in the wake of a blistering weekend press conference where she said she had instructed that Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr be killed should an alleged plot to kill her succeed. “The government is taking action to protect our duly elected president,” Philippine Undersecretary of Justice Jesse Andres said at yesterday’s press briefing. “The premeditated plot to assassinate the president as declared by the self-confessed mastermind
Ireland, the UK and France faced travel chaos on Saturday and one person died as a winter storm battered northwest Europe with strong winds, heavy rain, snow and ice. Hampshire Police in southern England said a man died after a tree fell onto a car on a major road near Winchester early in the day. Police in West Yorkshire said they were probing whether a second death from a traffic incident was linked to the storm. It is understood the road was not icy at the time of the incident. Storm Bert left at least 60,000 properties in Ireland without power, and closed
Czech intelligence chief Michal Koudelka has spent decades uncovering Russian spy networks, sabotage attempts and disinformation campaigns against Europe. Speaking in an interview from a high-security compound on the outskirts of Prague, he is now warning allies that pushing Kyiv to accept significant concessions to end the war in Ukraine would only embolden the Kremlin. “Russia would spend perhaps the next 10 to 15 years recovering from its huge human and economic losses and preparing for the next target, which is central and eastern Europe,” said Koudelka, a major general who heads the country’s Security Information Service. “If Ukraine loses, or is forced
THIRD IN A ROW? An expert said if the report of a probe into the defense official is true, people would naturally ask if it would erode morale in the military Chinese Minister of National Defense Dong Jun (董軍) has been placed under investigation for corruption, a report said yesterday, the latest official implicated in a crackdown on graft in the country’s military. Citing current and former US officials familiar with the situation, British newspaper the Financial Times said that the investigation into Dong was part of a broader probe into military corruption. Neither the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs nor the Chinese embassy in Washington replied to a request for confirmation yesterday. If confirmed, Dong would be the third Chinese defense minister in a row to fall under investigation for corruption. A former navy
RSS