Maurice Sendak was born on June 10, 1928. He won the 1964 Caldecott Award for his book Where The Wild Things Are. The New York Times obituary for Sendak (he died on May 8, 2012) begins:

“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.”

Sendak was a closeted gay man for most of his life, not wanting to let his parents know he wasn’t straight. He lived with his partner, Eugene Glynn, for 50 years before Glynn’s death in 2007.