"Where the Wild Things Are" creator Maurice Sendak comes out, vanquishing the scary monsters inside

In the "better late than never" category, iconic artist Maurice Sendak, who gave us one of the greatest contributions to children's literature with Where the Wild Things Are, has officially come out in a New York Times interview:

He talks about many things in the article, including his recent triple-bypass, and his insecurities about his work even after all these years, and he's asked if there's ever been a question he's never been asked in the many interviews he's given, and responds with "well, that i'm gay".

“I just didn’t think it was anybody’s business,” Mr. Sendak added. He lived with Eugene Glynn a psychoanalyst, for 50 years before Dr. Glynn’s death in May 2007. He never told his parents:"All I wanted was to be straight so my parents could be happy. They never, never, never knew."

Children protect their parents, Mr. Sendak said. It was like the time he had a heart attack at 39. His mother was dying from cancer in the hospital, and he decided to keep the news to himself, something he now regrets.

A gay artist in New York is not exactly uncommon, but Mr. Sendak said that the idea of a gay man writing children books would have hurt his career when he was in his 20s and 30s.

I still have my copy of Where The Wild Things Are from when I was a kid. Unlike a lot of children, I never found the book scary, but rather I was fascinated with it, and would often fantasize about being a part of it.

I'm also jonesing (sorry) to see the long awaited (and much troubled) big screen, live action version coming out ... sometime. (At last update it has been put back on the schedule for next year.)

So I'm very pleased to find out that yet another genius in his field is gay, and played an integral part of my childhood. Was Wild Things or any of Sendak's other books a big part of anyone else's upbringing?