Maurice Sendak was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1928 to poor Polish immigrants.  He attended the Art Students' League art school, and co-authored his first book, Atomics for the Millions, in 1947 at the age of nineteen.  Since 1980, Sendak has designed sets and costumes for numerous operas, including Mozart's Magic Flute, Prokofiev's The Love for Three Oranges, and Leo Janacek's The Cunning Little Vixen, and his own Where the Wild Things Are.  In 1964 he was awarded the Caldecott Medal.  He was the first American to receive the Hans Christian Andersen International Medal for the body of his work, has been awarded the American Library Association's Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, and in 1997 received a National Medal of the Arts, awarded by President Clinton.
 

In His Own Words:  "The point of my books has always been to ask how children cope with a monumental problem that happened instantly and changed their lives forever, but they have to go on living."  "These are difficult times for children. Children have to be brave to survive what the world does to them. And this world is scrungier and rougher and dangerouser than it ever was before."

Books by Maurice Sendak:
Alligators All Around
Dear Mili
Higglety Pigglety Pop
Hurry Home, Candy (written by Meindert DeJong)
Little Bear's Visit (written by Else Holmelund Minarik)
In the Night Kitchen
The Nutshell Library
The Moon Jumpers (written by Janice May Udry)
Outside Over There
Pierre : A Cautionary Tale in Five Chapters and a Prologue
Really Rosie
We're All in the Dumps With Jack and Guy
The Wheel on the School (written by Meindert DeJong)
Where The Wild Things Are
Zlateh the Goat and Other Stories (written by Isaac Bashevis Singer)

Maurice Sendak in Other Languages:
Zlateh die Geiss
 
return to Children's Literature