Maurice Sendak dies; author and illustrator wrote about children’s survival

By Becky Krystal
May 8, 2012

Maurice Sendak, an author and illustrator whose dozens of works, notably “Where the Wild Things Are,” transformed children’s literature from a gentle playscape into a medium to address the psychological intensity of growing up, died early Tuesday at a hospital in Danbury, Conn. after a recent stroke. He was 83.

Mr. Sendak was shaped foremost by a sickly and homebound childhood in Depression-era Brooklyn, the deaths of family members in the Holocaust and vivid memories as a youngster reading about the kidnapping and murder of aviator Charles Lindbergh's infant son.
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