Thank you, Mr. Sendak

When I open my bedroom door at home, books confront me. A bookcase stretching upwards to the ceiling creates a square halo of spines. The shelf at about shoulder height houses a small pile of miniature books: The Nutshell Library. They are fawn brown with light hardcovers wrapped in fabric that open to reveal characters that take control of their pages and the other characters on them.

I haven't posted here in a while, and I can excuse myself by muttering about exams and essays and Easter holidays, but today I'd like to thank Mr. Maurice Sendak. As I sit here writing, and listening to the Tammy Grimes narrated versions of his stories, Sendak's drawings burst open in my mind. I can see the tiger in One Was Johnny and the trees that transformed Max's bedroom.
There are many children's books, but not all of the stories, not all of the authors, have the power to light up our imaginations. Maurice Sendak always did. Stories that grab our minds and hearts as children are beautiful gifts; because when you return to your childhood home or a box of books at the back of a closet somewhere, it's like finding your supper still warm on the table, when you have been gone so long. Those memories are still crisp and colorful, waiting on the page to grab you once more.