For Maurice Sendak

As a matter of principle, I tend to stay away from these postmortem posts.  Whenever someone of note dies, it seems as though everyone comes out of the woodwork to try and find some kind of link said person had with their lives, however tenuous.  When the deceased gained fame through television, the movies or music, the overall interest seems to be high.  When the person was a famous author, unless they happened to be one of the rare few that have been embraced by the counterculture, not so much.

This morning, though I saw a short headline mentioning the death of Maurice Sendak, I didn't see any of the usual pandering.  There weren't hundreds of posts all over my Facebook wall, or my twitter feed, talking about how much he would be missed, the way they did following the deaths of Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson, when everyone seemed to forget the decade or more of jokes and instead chose to talk about how much their music had impacted their lives.  But not for Sendak.

The funny thing is, for my generation, a few before and a few after, I can just about guarantee his work had an impact.  Even if you didn't read the Little Bear books, which he illustrated, (and you really missed out there), I know that, must more likely than not, you read about Max's adventures Where the Wild Things Are.  Or maybe you just saw the movie, which was not nearly the same thing and you really ought to go and read the book.

It was a favorite of mine and taught me that my imagination was a brilliant and powerful thing, even when it was dark.  It most definitely had an impact on my own writing and the way I view the world.  It was easily the most intellectually complex children's book I've ever read.  It didn't talk down to me, which I hated, even then, and, for a kid who didn't have what you'd have called the most stable home life, it offered a kind of reassurance that I rarely found in books about Dick, Jane, slow-moving dogs or stubborn trains, not that I had much of an issue with those, either.

So this goes out to Maurice Sendak.  To this day, there is a place on my bookshelf for my first copy of Where the Wild Things Are.  There always has been and always will be because, sometimes, there are things you should just never leave behind.