On reading of the passing of Maurice Sendak on May 8, 2012, I watched two interviews on PBS with Bill Moyers, that take less than one hour. I highly recommend them to everyone, whether you are familiar with this "Author of Splendid Nightmares" or not. He is honest; he is humble; he loved the music of Mozart.
Born into a Jewish, lower class family, he lived a rather quiet life, often afraid, often quite ill as a child. He wished he could have told his parents that he was gay.
As a child, I was not read any of his books, but found them in libraries when my daughter was young, eventually buying quite a few of them. Years later, I read them to my young boys, copies still on dusty childhood book shelves or given to my grandsons.
In an interview on The Colbert Report in January 2012, Sendak stated he wasn't a fan of ebooks, saying, "Fuck them is what I say, I hate those ebooks. They cannot be the future... they may well be...I will be dead, I won't give a shit."
From his obituary-of-sorts in the New York Times Books section, the following letter from a young boy was included:
"Dear Mr. Sendak,
How much does it cost to get to where the wild things are? If it is not expensive, my sister and I would like to spend the summer there."