Read the book when I was little. Read it again when I was older. Read it plenty of times to my kids. Watched the movie when it came out. Bought the movie when it came out. Watched it over and over again since.

With his awesome talent of story telling that sometimes made no sense, Mr. Sendak took you to a place that you kinda wanted to go to but you weren’t too sure cause scary monsters that worship children scare the shit out of you.

Among this, he was also an artist. An amazing artist that used concise detail and shadowy colors to illustrate and bring to life characters that grew with you.

“I wasn’t gonna paint. And I wasn’t gonna do ostentatious drawings. I wasn’t gonna have gallery pictures. I was gonna hide somewhere where nobody would find me and express myself entirely. I’m like a guerrilla warfare in my best books” – Maurice Sendak

His monster characters in the book that made him famous were based on his relatives from Brooklyn that he hated as a small child and that would visit every Sunday with their bad breath and hairy noses…

He was also a gay Jewish man that hated his mother’s cooking.

 ”…what is too often overlooked — is the fact that from their earliest years children live on familiar terms with disrupting emotions, fear and anxiety are an intrinsic part of their everyday lives, they continually cope with frustrations as best they can. And it is through fantasy that children achieve catharsis. It is the best means they have for taming Wild Things.” – Maurice Sendak

RIP Maurice Sendak. Your legacy lives on.