Maurice Sendak, who has died aged 83, was one of the great writers and illustrators of children's literature. His imagination was deeply rooted in his own vividly remembered childhood and there is a powerful dreamlike quality to his work. He was a master draftsman, largely self-taught and in some ways quite traditional, because he was inspired by Victorian English illustrators such as Randolph Caldecott and by the Jewish European folklore of his own background. But this was mixed with the heady excitement of American comic strips and, of course, the movies. I met him once over dinner and he described his intense excitement as a child at going from his home in Brooklyn across the Brooklyn Bridge to the cinema in Manhattan to see Buster Keaton, Mickey Mouse and Laurel and Hardy, all of whom were strongly inspirational in his works.
Like most great children's story writers and illustrators, his work came from somewhere deep within, from a place that was in his case extremely dark. His childhood was overshadowed by the deaths of extended family in the concentration camps of Europe. So it is hardly surprising that the lost child, the child who is stolen away, as well as the maverick child who runs away from the stultifying strictures of adult life, were themes that Sendak returned to again and again in his work.
If you ask people what their favourite Maurice Sendak book is, they always say Where the Wild Things Are. But my personal favourite is In the Night Kitchen. It is so brilliantly scary and marvellously unsettling. Those chefs are frightening in the way that clowns and comedians can so often be. My other favourite is Outside Over There, his story of Ida, the jealous sibling whose baby sister is kidnapped by goblins through the nursery window. Again you have this theme of the lost or stolen child, so central to Sendak's work, and exerting such a deep pull for all of us.
Shirley Hughes is an author/illustrator. Her books include the Alfie series and Dogger. Her first teenage novel, Hero on a Bicycle, was recently published by Walker Books.
