Maurice Sendak, 1928-2012.
Coupled with finishing Code Name Verity last night, this has been a supremely weepy morning.
The New York Times:
A largely self-taught illustrator, Mr. Sendak was at his finest a shtetl Blake, portraying a luminous world, at once lovely and dreadful, suspended between wakefulness and dreaming. In so doing, he was able to convey both the propulsive abandon and the pervasive melancholy of children’s interior lives.
The Guardian:
He was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Polish Jewish immigrant parents and was aware, in his early teens, of the death of much of his extended family in the Holocaust. The terrors of his childhood specifically, and childhood more generally, flow through his work. "I refuse to lie to children," he said in an interview with the Guardian last year. "I refuse to cater to the bullshit of innocence."
The Christian Science Monitor:
"So I write books that seem more suitable for children, and that's OK with me. They are a better audience and tougher critics. Kids tell you what they think, not what they think they should think."
The Washington Post:
Together, Max, Mickey and Ida represent the fearful idea that parents are unaware of the crises their children face, Mr. Sendak told the Times of London. “It happens right before your eyes as a parent,” he said, referring to those moments when children must fend for themselves. “You know that, and you don't see it. And that's the point that just totally fascinates me. Something colossal has just brushed by that's going to change a child's life and you might have helped — if you'd looked!”
The Independant:
Sendak has been quoted as saying, “My gods are Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson and Mozart. I believe in them with all my heart.”
In a 1988 PEOPLE interview, Sendak defended his lifelong view that kids are tough enough for the grimmest fairy tales. "Parents shouldn't assume children are made out of sugar candy and will break and collapse instantly. Kids don't. We do."