"Oh please don't go-"

I woke this morning to the sad news that Maurice Sendak had just died. 
After dropping the kids off at school, I stopped by our local used bookstore and bought a copy of the "controversial" In the Night Kitchen. 

The cashier said, "Did you hear?"
I said, "Yes".
"Its sad," she said.
"Very sad."

Maurice Sendak was the preeminent childrens' author and illustrator of the 20th century.  His stories and pictures contained the dark, unknown, and therefore, mysterious sides of childhood.  His characters, like all children, have to face life and come out the other side a bit of a hero.

In a 2003 interview, he commented on writing books for children saying, "They are a better audience and tougher critics. Kids tell you what they think, not what they think they should think."

I studied childrens' literature in college.  Here is an excerpt from a paper I wrote on the works of Maurice Sendak:
"The most intriguing element of Sendak's style is the wonderful musicality of his illustrations.  One can see that there is music playing when looking at the pictures.  The characters dance and move to the rhythm of some unheard song.  The author shouts acceptance to this observation.  Sendak lives for music....Remembering almost exactly what piece he was listening to at each step of any particular book, page, or scene,..."  Look at the monsters dancing with Max in Where the Wild Things Are.  It is the music and dancing that helps Max rule the wild things.  Whe our kids were small and we got to the point of roaring our roars, gnashing our teeth, rolling our eyes, and pretty much showing our claws,...we turned on the music and danced with the kids.  Even when they were infants; but especially when they were monsters toddlers.  Sendak even drew Mozart into the illustrations of at least two books, Dear Mili and Outside Over There.  Mozart isn't part of the story, just part of the picture.  You can see him in this picture, on the left hand page, laying down with a red coat on, conducting the small group of children.

Dear Mili is a treasure of a book.  It is a story that was written in a letter by Wilhelm Grimm (of the Grimm brothers) to a little girl who had lost both her parents.  Grimm wrote the letter as a sort of comfort and it reads just as if the two were sitting together on the couch and he is making up the story as he goes.  The girls' family had the letter for 150 years before it was publically discovered in 1983.  Five years later, it was published, accompanied by illustrations of Maurice Sendak.  No better combination than Grimm and Sendak - and that their paths should cross in such a way!  In the story, a mother sends her little girl into the woods were she will be safe from the impending war.  When the girl thinks she cannot go on any further, she asks God for help and instantly feels better.  When it begins to rain, she says, "God and my heart are weeping together."
As it began to rain this morning, I thought distinctly of those words.