We lost a great man today; Maurice Sendak, an author/illustrator who, to me, was up there with the greats; Roald Dahl, Bill Waterson, and Charles Schultz, all of whom had the heart and the chutzpah to tell children the truth; something Sendak was never afraid to do.
All of these men were hounded by their personal lives, Dahl; a serial womaniser and anti-semite, Schultz, whose marriage dissolved around him as he channeled his despondency back into Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang, and last but not least Sendak, whose magnum opus, Where The Wild Things Are, was his response to being dogged by depression.
I would like to say thank you to Sendak; thank him for having the spirit to never back down, thank him for showing us as kids (and adults) the real shape of things; the sad, dark truth of the world, and most importantly for showing us the other side of that same coin; that there's an everyday wonderment of childhood — and if you take that through to adulthood, then you're golden— , that every day is an adventure, that the mundane is glorious if we just look hard enough.
Watch this video.
