‘Where the Wild Things Are’ author Maurice Sendak dies at 83

Maurice Sendak, the author of the popular children’s books Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen, has died. He was 83.

Sendak died early Tuesday morning in Danbury, Connecticut, after suffering a stroke on Friday, his editor Michael di Capua told the New York Times.

Sendak, an author and illustrator, often wrote about the dark side of childhood. He was awarded the prestigious Caldecott Medal for Where the Wild Things Are in 1964, and a National Medal of the Arts in 1996 from President Bill Clinton for his vast portfolio of work.

Where The Wild Things Are was made into a movie in 2009. Sendak said he approved of the Spike Jonze-directed film, saying he never wanted the main character, Max, to be turned into a trite “good little boy.”

Sendak was born in Brooklyn, New York, on June 10, 1928 to Jewish immigrant parents, the youngest of three children.  

A series of childhood illnesses left Sendak confined to his bed for many months, where he spent time reading and drawing.

That, along with memories of the Holocaust and the Second World War, informed his writing.

“My childhood was about thinking about the kids over there (in Europe). My burden is living for those who didn’t,” Sendak once told the Associated Press.

Sendak publicly came out in 2008, telling the New York Times he had lived with his partner, psychoanalyst Eugene Glynn, for 50 years before Glynn’s death in May 2007. He had never told his parents he was gay.

He is survived by his sister Natalie. His brother Jack Sendak passed away in 1995.

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