My One Regret (Meeting Maurice Sendak)

There's a saying that you should never meet your heroes.

I met Maurice Sendak once.

Well, actually, that's not true.

The truth is, back in 2005, when I was just starting out in the business, I was at an event and Maurice Sendak was being honored with an award.

While I was walking around I could hear people say things like...

"He's not a very nice man."

"He's very grouchy. He doesn't like people."

While talking to some other illustrators they said to me, "Don't do it. Just keep your pure image of the man in your mind."

I saw Maurice from across the room while I was pacing around the entire night thinking about what I would do. I didn't want my only memory of him to be an awful one, after all, It was probably the only chance I would ever get to meet him. What if he said something hurtful, or told me that my work was crap?

He gave his speech and after the crowd thinned out a few people were congratulating him as he came down from the stage. He walked by me and we looked at each other.

I said nothing.

We just stared at each other. He was expecting me to say something and I froze. Then someone else spoke to him and his attention shifted and he went on his way.

That was it.

I should have said something.

Anything.

That was the one time I met Maurice Sendak.

That is my one regret.

Comments

[AHAnto]

Similar experience, when he was in Toronto way back when giving a talk about the opera Hansel and Gretel (btw, the sets absolutely STOLE that show)part of the crowd waiting to speak to him, I chickened out, didn't say antying ... and after a while I realized I was just glad that he was. That he existed. That he worked to make the way he saw world visible, a doorway for kids and adults alike. Even now I doubt there was anything he needed to hear from me - and I still hear his voice, read his books, and return again and again to the fact that he did his best to be truthful - and if that made him seem a curmudgeon to some, maybe it's okay to do wonderful, luminous, life-changing work - and still not be a people person.

[Kerry]

Dan,
I have a friend that was at a Talking Heads concert years ago, (before they were really big) in the late 70's. Anyway he was snapping pictures, and when the song ended, David Byrne jumped down off the stage to get something to drink, and my friend stood in front of him and snapped a picture. David Byrne pushed him down on the ground and walked off. . . . So there's that.

[wouter bruneel]

I had a similar experience with the great illustrators Dan Santat and Peter Brown at SCBWI NY 2012. What do you say anyway?

[Kate Dopirak]

I got so nervous when I stood face-to-face with Peter Brown at NY SCBWI, that I just blurted, "Do you know where Joyce Wan is?"

When I got back home and my writer friends asked me if I had met Peter Brown, I said, "Well, kind of. He did know where Joyce Wan was."

[Gregory K.]

A friend of the family ended up at an event with Jacquie O... and ended up in a food buffet line directly behind her. She was floored and flummoxed but decided she had to speak to her idol. So she said... "The beans look good, don't they?" And that was her moment. so there's that, too.

[Jill McElmurry]

Funny, his grouchiness is one of the reasons I liked him so much. He was a curmudgeon and it gave other curmudgeonly children's bookeroonis (like me) room to be ourselves. Not all of us are chipper and outgoing, not all of us are crazy about kids. I'm grateful for him.

PS. I'm also grateful for YOU, Dan Santat!

[Account Deleted]

You got a badass blog man .