Sendak

Ms. Hogrogian was a close friend of the renowned illustrators Maurice Sendak and Ezra Jack Keats, and like them she drew on the old-world European artistry and traditions of her immigrant family to broaden American children’s literature starting in the 1960s.

Before his disappearance, Edgar, who is known around the studio and has precocious art skills, drew up plans for a new “walk-around” puppet, a furry blue monster he calls Eric — a blend of a Maurice Sendak Wild Thing, Sulley from “Monsters, Inc.” and the Muppets’ Sweetums — in hopes it will help save “Good Day Sunshine.”

“Babar,” Maurice Sendak said, “is at the very heart of my conception of what turns a picture book into a work of art.”

On a frigid Wednesday afternoon, sunbeams poured into Maurice Sendak’s studio in Ridgefield, Conn., crisscrossing one another with the precision and warmth of the children’s books that were born in this room.

Sendak died almost 12 years ago, but his studio is exactly as he left it.