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He made the monsters fun. Maurice Sendak, the child author and illustrator, has died at age 83. His books and style of illustration immediately evoked a whole world of creatures and characters, dark places that were part scary and part cozy. Art Spiegelman, Pulitzer Prize winning creator of the graphic novel, Maus, comments on the life of Sendak.

In 1973, Art Spiegelman published a three-page comic strip in a small underground publication called "Funny Animals." It was the first installment of what he called "Maus," the biography of Spiegelman's father, Vladek — a Holocaust survivor — with anthropomorphic mice standing in for Spiegelman, Vladek, and his fellow Jews. The complete graphic narrative was eventually published in two volumes. In 1992, nearly twenty years after he began work on the project, "Maus" was given a special award from the Pulitzer Prize Committee — to date, the only graphic novel honored by the Committee.

Art Spiegelman revisits his Pulitzer prize–winning Maus, published 25 years ago. In MetaMaus: A Look Inside a Modern Classic, Maus, edited and based on interviews by Hillary Chute, he probes the questions that Maus most often evokes—Why the Holocaust? Why mice? Why comics?—and gives us a new and essential work about the creative process. MetaMaus includes a DVD with audio interviews with his survivor father, historical documents, and a trove of Spiegelman’s private notebooks and sketches.

Pilobolus artistic director Michael Tracy discusses the dance theater’s collaboration with Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Art Spiegelman and award-winning musician Dan Zanes for its current season at the Joyce Theater, July 12-August 7. Program 1, Hapless Hooligan in "Still Moving" features Pilobolus dancers interacting live with Spiegelman's drawings. Program 3, Contradance, is a collaboration with Dan Zanes.

Art Spiegelman stopped by The Leonard Lopate Show to talk about some of his favorite picks.