Wild Things

There’s one less today, though the many he released into the world and the imaginations he unlocked dwarf even his own demise.

Maurice Sendak, widely considered the most important children’s book artist of the 20th century, who wrenched the picture book out of the safe, sanitized world of the nursery and plunged it into the dark, terrifying and hauntingly beautiful recesses of the human psyche, died on Tuesday in Danbury, Conn. He was 83 and lived in Ridgefield, Conn.

He was one artist who had the keys – to the till, to the store, to the mind, however you want to think about it. RIP, Maurice.