Sendak turns 80

There is something about children's literature, good children's lit, that slows the world down. The pace is not dumb or the subject light, but the craft of the writer has so little place to hide. Good stories of any kind are ones that show us a picture of the world which is more complete than looking at it alone could do.

What initially drew me to this article was not the celebration of Maurice Sendak's 80th birthday featuring a guest list that can only be earned, not bought. It was not even his work, considered by many critics to be some of the more important literature of our time in any category. What drew me was his story, coming out now at the age of 80, processing through the grief over the death of his partner for 50 years and his regret over hiding so much from his parents. The clip below highlights in words more eloquent than mine the thought I will leave with as I celebrate his work, mourn his loss and hope for his creative genius to touch him as it has so many others.

Sendak is pleased with the coming birthday celebration, just as he is about his awards and honors, but in the end, he maintained, they don't add up to much. They "never penetrated," he said. "They were like rubber bullets."

It's not that he isn't grateful. "They made me happy, but at a certain point in your life, you see through them," he said. "You don't mock them, you don't hate them, you feel sorry for them" — tiny, inert emblems that just aren't up to the task of answering pressing questions about meaning, soul-touching greatness and durability.

So he spends his days pondering his heroes: Mozart, Keats, Blake, Melville and Dickinson. He admires and yearns for their "ability to be private, the ability to be alone, the ability to follow some spiritual course not written down by anybody."

Sendak is quick to insist that a vast distance stands between his own accomplishments and theirs. "I'm not one of those people," he said. "I can't pretend to be."

Still, he has the feeling that "I will do something yet that is purely for me but will create for someone in the future that passion that Blake and Keats did in me."

What he has failed to consider, though, is that he may already have.

A movie of his timeless book "Where the Wild Things Are" is due to premier in the fall next year.