A child's world, authentic and complex

As I kid, I was scared of monsters. Specifically, the Star Trek Salt-Vampire and Hans Christian Anderson’s Death, sitting on the Emperor’s chest. (I slept on my side for years after reading “The Nightingale.” Death couldn’t get you, I reasoned, if you declined him a seat.)

Danger was largely imagined in my life, but it is not so for many children--children who know that people die, that they don’t always have what they need, that they are vulnerable to the amorality of illness and the deep cruelties of others. Children who know themselves to be complex people in a world that treats them as simple and unimportant creatures.

I was never afraid of the monsters in Where the Wild Things Are, the best-known book by Maurice Sendak, who died on Tuesday. They were loving, even if their love was a bit menacing: We’ll eat you up, we love you so. They immediately see the power in young Max and make him their king. They mourn when he leaves them.