SHORT TAKES : Award for Children’s Author

Maurice Sendak has devoted his talents to entertaining youngsters. But parents, too, are often entertained by the children’s book author and illustrator.

Sendak, who has written and illustrated 20 books and illustrated more than 60, will get something back today: the first Empire State Award for Excellence in Literature for Young People. Presenting the award will be the Youth Services Section of the New York Library Assn.

“I’ve had a mad love affair with a form called the picture book,” he said. “It is language and pictures working together. It is about making it so tight and making it your own. In order to do that you have to write, write, pare down, pare down.”

Sendak, 62, shrugs off criticism that his books can be frightening.

“I’ve always done what I wanted to do,” he said. “You see, there were no ground rules when I started in the 1950s. We just made it up. Children’s art, children’s books, children were less important then.”