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This week on our program, we remember the award-winning writer and illustrator Maurice Sendak. He died on May eighth, two thousand twelve, at the age of eighty-three. During his career Maurice Sendak produced more than one hundred children’s books. Now here are Faith Lapidus and Shirley Griffith to tell our story. For over sixty years, his artistic skill brought to life richly imaginative worlds filled with children, animals and magical creatures. Two of his works -- “Where the Wild Things Are” and “In the Night Kitchen” -- helped redefine modern children’s literature. Maurice Sendak was born in nineteen twenty-eight in the Brooklyn part of New York City. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Poland. They met in New York. As a child, Maurice was often sick. As a result, he stayed home and read books and drew pictures to entertain himself. As an author and illustrator, Maurice Sendak became known for stories that were often dark and intense. For example, “Outside Over There” is about a baby kidnapped by goblins while her older sister is not paying attention. The sister must leave the safety of home to rescue the baby from a strange and dream-like world. Maurice Sendak said he got the idea for “Outside Over There” from a real-life kidnapping that ended in tragedy. In nineteen thirty-two, the baby son of the famous pilot Charles Lindbergh was kidnapped from home and murdered. | 
