But the arm began to move across the bed very, very, very slowly and reached up to her mother’s arm and then moved with great poise to her mother’s hand and then clutched and shook her mother’s hand. And she knew absolutely what her mother was feeling and going through. I knew she knew. She had to know. I mean children simply have to know what’s happening in order to survive in this insane world we live in.
- Maurice Sendak describes the experience of meeting a terminally ill child and her mother during the Library’s Centennial Celebration, April 1994