Maurice Sendak
Maurice Sendak
Maurice Bernard Sendakwas an American illustrator and writer of children's books. He became widely known for his book Where the Wild Things Are, first published in 1963. Born to Jewish-Polish parents, his childhood was affected by the death of many of his family members during the Holocaust. Besides Where the Wild Things Are, Sendak also wrote works such as In the Night Kitchen, Outside Over There, and illustrated many works by other authors including the Little Bear books by Else...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionChildren's Author
Date of Birth10 June 1928
CityBrooklyn, NY
CountryUnited States of America
I thought that if I were going into old age I would want to do what [Giuseppe] Verdi did, which is to write extraordinary things, and to really find myself.
I'm still as enamored and turned on by work as I was when I was young.
It was a very difficult time. I was working on [umble-Ardy] when my partner and friend was dying of cancer. We set up a room in the house to be like a hospital room. Eugene died, and then I had bypass surgery. I was doing the book to stay sane while all this was going on.
He was the strangest little bird I'd ever seen. He had fluttered into the world of the studios and, could he not be swatted dead, I knew he would manage. I had total faith in him.
Finding out that I was gay when I was older was a shock and a disappointment.
And the walls became the world all around.
All I liked to do when I was a kid was draw.
I wish you all good things. Live your life, live your life, live your life.
And now," cried Max, "let the wild rumpus start!
You can start making up any kind of story if you want to.
I was sickly as a child and gravitated to books and drawing. During my early teen years, I spent hundreds of hours at my window, sketching neighborhood children at play. I sketched and listened, and those notebooks became the fertile field of my work later on. There is not a book I have written or a picture I have drawn that does not, in some way, owe them its existence.
We all want to be renewed, don't we?
Kids don't know about best sellers. They go for what they enjoy. They aren't star chasers and they don't suck up. It's why I like them.
There are so many beautiful things in the world which I will have to leave when I die, but I'm ready, I'm ready, I'm ready.