Maurice Sendak, born in 1928, was the youngest of three children and raised in Brooklyn. Maurice was first inspired to become an illustrator when he saw Disney's Fantasia at the age of twelve. He illustrated comics before turning to book illustration. His first published illustrations were in the book Atomics for the Millions, it was published in 1947 when he was just nineteen. After briefly working as a window decorator at FAO Schwartz, he began to write and illustrate children's books.
In 1963 he published what would become his most well known book, Where The Wild Things Are. The story begins after the main character Max gets sent to his room without dinner for yelling at his mother and while in his room imagines a world full of scary monsters where the rest of the story takes place. The story itself is only nine lines long, and heavily relies on Sendak's beautiful illustrations to tell the bulk of the tale. It was a success with critics, but was otherwise controversial. Adults found the books illustrations too scary for kids, and thought the main character, Max, was a bad role model. The book eventually gained popularity, was translated into over a dozen other languages, and went on to sell millions of copies. Where The Wild Things Are was such an iconic work of children's literature that it was adapted into a movie by Spike Jonze that was released in late 2009. His later book, In the Night Kitchen (published in 1970), was also controversial because a boy named Mickey, it's main character, ends up naked. Many librarians and bookstores refused to carry the book.
Maurice Sendak is very well respected as a children's author and has won several award including the National Medal of Arts, the Caldecott Prize, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal, Hans Christian Andersen Award and was the first to win the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award for Literature. He has illustrated more than sixty books and written over a dozen of his own. To find out more about this highly regarded writer and illustrator please see the links below.
Hans Christen Andersen Award Exhibit - links to a video interview with Maurice Sendak
Maurice Sendak - PBS's American Masters series
A Conversation with Maurice Sendak - An NPR interview
Where The Wild Things Are - Story of the month
Maurice Sendak Papers - University of Southern Mississippi's collection of children's literature.
Maurice Sendak - Waldorf Library PDF Document
Caldecott List - List of winners of the Caldecott Prize from 1938-2006
Descent into Limbo - MIT site with a video of a lecture Sendak gave
Maurice Sendak - a collection of articles about Sendak from the New York Times
Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal - List of winners
Hans Christen Andersen Award - description of the award and a list of recipients
Through the Eyes of a Child - an article about the censorship of children's books
Banned Books - A list of the most frequently banned books
Where The Wild things Are - NPR interview with Spike Jonze about adapting the book into a movie
Authors and Illustrators - Harper Collins page on Sendak