Maurice Sendak

An eternal twilight reigns over Maurice Sendak’s pages: dark cross-hatching, thick outlines, ominous skies. All his characters, human and beast alike, are lumpy and big-headed and seem to be part potato. But they’re capable of great joy in spite of it all. They kick up their heavy limbs and grin toothy grins as if to say, Yes, the world is dark. We’re going to have a damn good time of it anyway. Let the wild rumpus start!

Sendak’s art made its way into every medium–movies, operas, ballet–but he was best known for his picture books, which never participate in the adult conspiracy that forces kids to pretend they don’t already know how hard life is. “I refuse to lie to children,” Sendak, who died May 8 at 83, said in a 2011 interview. “I refuse to cater to the bull—- of innocence.” Where the Wild Things Are turned the old story about monsters in the closet on its head by making a little boy the biggest monster in the jungle. It was Sendak’s way of saying children already know where the wild things are, because they’re the wildest things of all.