Maurice Sendak was born 10 June 1928 in Brooklyn, New York, to poor Polish immigrants of Jewish extraction. He was poor at sports as a child and often sickly, spending a great deal of his childhood at home with his mother. He loved to draw, often inspired by the efforts of his older brother. An avid reader, Sendak depended on his sister to bring home books from the library. Numbered among his favorite authors were Robert Louis Stevenson, Herman Melville, and Mark Twain. But his father too was a favorite storyteller, interspersing fantastic tales with stories about the gruesome deaths suffered by relatives left in the old country. Phillip Sendak had his own versions of Old Testament tales as well. And Maurice, unaware that his father's racy embellishments were inappropriate for children, was once sent home from school for reiterating the details of one of these softcore Bible tales.
At the age of twelve, Sendak saw the film Fantasia and decided to become a cartoonist. A letter to Disney received no response, but by the time he was in high school he was already churning out professional work. He illustrated for his high school biology teacher's book, Atomics for the Millions (1947), and was hired to do backgrounds for a comic book version of the famous Mutt and Jeff strip. After finishing high school he took a job with F.A.O. Schwartz as a window dresser, studying by night at the New York Art Students League. It wasn't long before he landed his first gig as a children's book illustrator, for Marcel Ayme's The Wonderful Farm (1951). A year later Sendak paired up with Ruth Kraus for A Hole Is to Dig (1952). Kraus and her husband Crockett Johnson, author of Harold and the Purple Crayon, both took an interest in Sendak, encouraging his work and sharing a wealth of wisdom and constructive criticism.
