Maurice Sendak, the author who introduced millions of children worldwide to mischievous Max and his monsters in Where The Wild Things Are, died on Tuesday, his publisher said. He was 83.
“He died on Tuesday in Danbury, Connecticut. The cause was complication from a recent stroke,” Erin Crum, at HarperCollins in New York, said.
Critics say it is impossible to imagine children’s literature without Sendak, whose whimsical works penned throughout a 60-year career have been read by millions and translated into dozens of languages.
Although the 1963 Where The Wild Things Are is the best known, he penned and illustrated nearly 50 books, including the acclaimed Little Bear series.
Memorable works include Pierre about a mischievous, quarrelsome child whose constant refrain throughout the book is “I don’t care!”
Other perennial favorites are Really Rosie In the night Kitchen and Outside over there.
He won the prestigious Caldecott prize for children’s literature, the Newbery medal, the international Hans Christian Andersen Award, a National Book Award, the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award and a National Medal of Arts.