RIP Maurice Sendak

As far as children's literature goes, I would not hesitate to place Sendak on the same level as Dr. Seuss and Carl Barks.  I grew up with a lot of his books, and looking down his wikipedia page, I was actually surprised to find how many others that I'd read or had read to me he'd done the art for.  A truly great artist.  He wrote Where the Wild Things Are when he was thirty-two.  What have I done that's so great lately?  And he wasn't just a great artist, either.  I heard this interview he did with Bill Moyers when it first aired, and I was just blown away by how wise and good he was.  You look at someone like him and you think, oh yeah--so this is how it can be.  People like this provide a justification for human existence. 

And then you remember how horribly diseased our political culture is, and you get depressed.  But for one shining moment it seemed like humanity could be redeemed and maybe, some wildly, implausibly utopian part of my mind says, still can be.