Maurice Sendak Is Born in Brooklyn

Maurice Sendak was born on June 10, 1928, in Brooklyn, the son of Sadie and Philip Sendak, Polish-Jewish immigrants; his father worked as a dressmaker and money was never easy. He grew up a frail, often bedridden child who spent Sundays watching relatives crowd into the apartment, the same aunts, uncles, and cousins he later turned into fanged, clawed monsters on the page. In 1963 he published Where the Wild Things Are, the story of a boy named Max who is sent to bed without supper and sails off to rule an island of beasts before choosing to come home anyway. The book won the Caldecott Medal in 1964, the top American honor for picture books, and went on to sell in the millions even as some parents and librarians at the time worried it was too frightening for children. Sendak kept drawing and writing until his death in 2012, having spent a career arguing that kids could handle a lot more truth about fear and anger than adults gave them credit for.