Maurice Sendak, who inspired us all to go have fun with the phrase, "let the wild rumpus begin," died yesterday at age 83.
"Every once in a while, someone comes along who changes our world for the better," Susan Katz, publisher of HarperCollins Children's Book, said in a statement. "Maurice Sendak was such a man."
Reading it aloud has been a bedtime ritual for at least three generations and the book is considered one of the 10 bestselling children's books of all time.
Over his amazing career, Sendak illustrated about 80 books and won countless awards for his illustrations. Like Dr. Seuss, he shook up the status quo and became an icon almost instantly.
By the time Where the Wild Things Are came out, Time magazine had already dubbed Sendak "the Picasso" of children's literature. And by 1971, the Los Angeles Times was hailing him as the "Norman Mailer of children's books."
