Maurice Sendak: ‘I Wonder Why People Still Have Children’

Renowned children's author Maurice Sendak is 82 now, aware of his own mortality, and more concerned than ever that grown-ups are mucking things up for kids. "I think I'm getting out just in time," he tells the Philadelphia Inquirer. "Watching the news, everything seems to be in disorder. Everybody seems to be unhappy. We've lost the knack of living in the world with the sensation of safety."

Which eventually leads the author of Where the Wild Things Are to this: "I wonder why people still have children. I mean, why put kids in the world when the world is so insecure?" The Inquirer notes that he dispenses observations like these not with gloom but with more of a "rollicking doom" familiar to readers. "I take kids seriously," he says at another point. "They have a lot of things wrong. They protect their parents. Children are brave little creatures." Click for the full interview. (More Maurice Sendak stories.)