Artist and author Maurice Sendak died 8 May 2012. He suffered a stroke a few days earlier, and never regained consciousness. Born 10 June 1928 in Brooklyn, New York, he will forever be remembered as the author of Where the Wild Things Are.
Sendak was born to immigrant parents, and in 2006, described his childhood as a terrible situation to NPR, because so much of his family died in the Holocaust, which exposed him at an early age to death and the concept of mortality. His first artistic job was as a window dresser at the iconic New York toy store, FAO Schwarz. His break as an illustrator came in 1951, when he was commissioned to do the art for Marcel Ayme’s The Wonderful Farm. Within a few years, he was also writing his own books.
In 1963, he wrote and illustrated the modern children’s classic, Where the Wild Things Are. The book has sold nearly 20 million copies worldwide (more than half of those in the US), and been adapted into an animated short (1973), an opera (1980), and a feature film directed by Spike Jonze (2009). In 1964, the book won Sendak the Caldecott Medal.
Within the last decade, he completed Brundibar, a folk tale about two children who need to earn enough money to buy milk for their sick mother. That is the book he was most proud of, saying “This is the closest thing to a perfect child I’ve ever had.” He had a hand in staging it as an opera. In addition to his book work, Sendak also created costumes for ballets and operas.
For his full bibliography, see Sendak’s Wikipedia entry.
Sendak received the Hans Christian Andersen Award for children’s book illustration (1970), the National Book Award for Outside Over There (1982), the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal (1983), the National Medal of Arts (1996), and the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (2003). An elementary school in North Hollywood, California, is named for him.
Sendak illustrated several books written by his brother, Jack, who died in 1995. Sendak’s partner of 50 years, psychoanalyst Eugene Glynn, died five years ago.