Maurice Sendak died this week at age 83. Sendak, along with William Steig, is among absolute favorite writers and illustrators of books for children.

Like Steig, Sendak’s writing is poetry and also like Steig, Sendak doesn’t have nearly enough female characters.

Sendak does have some great females in his books that you may never heard of. Soon after I started this blog, I wrote about my favorite Sendak book, Outside Over There, all about a brave girl who rescues her baby sister. My brother-in-law recently sent me a YouTube of “Really Rosie,” a Sendak cartoon with great music by Carole King. Rosie is the imaginative director who casts characters and decides which stories are good and which are not, kind of like the job I’d like to have.