http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/oct/20/maurice-sendak-wild-things-hell

In addition to dismissing the fears of overly-protective parents, Sendak discusses his anger at Disney for turning his childhood hero, Mickey Mouse, into a “schmaltzer,” who he now despises. And the battle he had to fight to keep the word “hot” in the final line of the book (the publisher wanted to change it to “warm” so that parents wouldn’t object that the meal might burn children…)

Further, he revealed that the wild things were based on relatives of his who spoke little English. Here is Sendak describing their visits to his family’s home when he was a kid:

“They grabbed you and twisted your face, and they thought that was an affectionate thing to do,” he said. “And I knew that my mother’s cooking was pretty terrible, and it also took forever, and there was every possibility that they would eat me, or my sister or my brother. We really had a wicked fantasy that they were capable of that. We couldn’t taste any worse than what she was preparing. So that’s who the Wild Things are. They’re foreigners, lost in America, without a language. And children who are petrified of them, and don’t understand that these gestures, these twistings of flesh, are meant to be affectionate.”