When he grew up, he did just that! Not only did Maurice Sendak become an illustrator, but he became one of the most important illustrators of the 20th Century. He made more than 10,000 works of art. His artwork was always created with the spirit of a child. He once said, “In reality, childhood is deep and rich ... I remember my own childhood… I knew terrible things ... but I knew I mustn’t let adults know I knew ... it would scare Photo of Maurice Sendak with illustrations in progress them.” Look at Sendak’s artwork. You can Maurice Sendak was an artist, an illustrator see his interest in death: lions that may eat and writer of children’s books, a designer of you up, baby-stealing goblins, fire, darkness, theatrical sets and costumes, and a grown shadows, and the Wild Things with their man who was able to keep his younger self terrible teeth. alive in his heart.

“[I] am trying to draw the way children feel— or, rather, the way I imagine they feel. It’s the way I know I felt as a child.”

Maurice Sendak was born in , , to Polish-Jewish parents in 1928. He lived in the United States but lost many of his family members during the Holocaust. This was very hard for him and it changed his view on life and death. As a child, he became very sick, and was not able to get out of bed. While being stuck in bed was not fun, it was the start of Sendak’s love for books. Books were his primary source for entertainment. When he was 12 years old, he decided that he wanted to be an illustrator when he grew up. Maurice Sendak's illustration in Nikolenka's Childhood by Image from Hector Protector and As I Went Over the Water: Two Nursery Rhymes by Maurice Sendak

His art doesn’t all look the same. Each drawing and painting is different from the other. As Sendak said, “If you have only one style, then you’re going to do the same book over and over, which is pretty dull. So, develop a fine style, a fat style, and fairly slim style, and a really rough style.” See how he changes his paper choices, his drawing and painting materials, the textures and lines in his artwork, and the bright or dull colors he chooses.

Maurice Sendak worked very hard. He made art every single day. He wrote 17 children’s Pencil sketches by Maurice Sendak books, including “Where the Wild Things Are” (1963) and “” (1970), and he was also the illustrator of more than 70 books by other children’s authors. Later in life, he also began a career of designing sets for operas and ballets. But, when asked about being famous, Sendak doesn’t th ink it was his hard work that got him there. He says it comes from being different, “not because I drew better than anybody or wrote better than anybody, but because I was more honest than anybody.”

He died in 2012, just before his 84th birthday. Illustration from Where the Wild Things Are