Goodbye, Maurice

JA from MNPP here with very sad news indeed - Maurice Sendak, the author most famously of Where the Wild Things Are but also amongst many more In the Night Kitchen and Outside, Over There (which was the basis for the movie Labyrinth) and the illustrator for thrice as many more, passed away today at the age of 83 due to complications from a recent stroke. His most recent book Bumble-Andy just came out last year, and he made the interview rounds reminding many of us just what a brilliant ornery singular man he was. Here's the first part of a wonderful interview he did with Stephen Colbert just in January, and here's part two. It's must watch.

Spike Jonze adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are came out in 2009, and it was my favorite movie of that year; about it I said that Spike Jonze "scraped up not just the book but everything inside myself that's attached to its memory and he spilled it out on the screen, a torrent of beautiful and horrible feelings and thoughts, jumbled up like rawest adolescence itself." Losing Maurice today is making me feel the same way - like a bewildered and angry child, and knowing that he would have smacked me and told me to snap out of it only makes the loss worse. RIP Maurice.

Comments

[Rob Christianson]

I remember singing "A Alligators All Around" back in first grade. Adn Where the Wild Things Are has been very influencial on my own illustration career. Take a look at the tribute illustration I did yesterday, in Sendak's style:

http://robchristianson.wordpress.com/2012/05/08/goodbye-maurice/