I loved the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle series in 1st Grade, especially this one.

Amid all the signs that our world is ending, it’s reassuring to remember that the world has always been about to end for some people.

When I was about 7 years of age, I remember standing in the school library with a couple of other children and Mrs. Sorrentino, the librarian. She had just returned from a librarians’ convention out-of-state.

The only reason I remember the name Sorrentino is because of this anecdote. What happened next had a profound effect on me. I was never the same afterwards.

With a chummishness that was more suited for adult-to-adult conversation, and which struck even my 7-year-old self as inappropriate, she regaled us:

“I was so excited! I actually met Maurice Sendak. Yes, the Maurice Sendak, who does those wonderful picture books you kids love. I put my hand on my chest like this and was almost out of breath, because, well, he’s famous! This was on Tuesday evening, and he was giving a speech Wednesday at the conference, so I said, ‘Well, I guess I’ll see you tomorrow then, Mr. Sendak!’ And he replied in the strangest voice: ‘If there IS a tomorrow.’“

She issued a high-pitched giggle and looked around at her small audience of small first-graders, expecting us to appreciate this “humorous” story in the same way she did.

Instead my lips started quivering, the inside of my face got very hot and I said urgently, “What does that mean? What did he mean?”

“Oh, I suppose he was just trying to put me on. I didn’t think anything of it, except to think he’s a remarkably strange man! Ha, ha.”

My immediate reaction was acute. I wandered off into the “stacks” on the pretense of looking for a book, but really to be alone with my devastation. I felt like fainting, throwing up, crying and running away all at the same time.

That was the first time the notion of the end of the world was communicated to me.

Maurice Sendak, who unwittingly (?) took away my childhood innocence, reappeared 20 years later around the periphery of my life, through an association I had with the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia. That’s when I first found out he’s a gay, about 10 years before the rest of the world knew.

I remember being very surprised to hear that.

Tags: Doomsday, Gay Authors, Librarians, Maurice Sendak, Rosenbach Museum and Library, Where the Wild Things Are