It tells the story of Max, a disobedient boy who, after being sent to his bedroom without dinner, travels to a land of fanged, hairy monsters and eventually faces them down.

Sendak rose to international prominence with the publication of Where the Wild Things Are, which he wrote and illustrated. Sendak illustrated books for a variety of children’s authors before writing and illustrating a picture book of his own, Kenny’s Window, published in 1956. Nordstrom commissioned Sendak to illustrate his first children’s book, The Wonderful Farm, written by Marcel Ayme and published in 1951. While there, he was introduced to book editor Ursula Nordstrom (who during her career worked with a number of popular children’s book authors, including Margaret Wise Brown, E.B. After graduating from high school in Brooklyn, Sendak, who developed a love of drawing as a boy, took art classes at night and in 1948 found work as a window display designer at FAO Schwarz, the Manhattan toy store. His father, a dressmaker, lost a number of family members during the Holocaust, and that tragedy that haunted the younger Sendak. He was sickly and spent much of his time indoors. Sendak, whose parents were Jewish immigrants from Poland, described his own childhood as unhappy. First published in 1963, Where the Wild Things Are was pioneering in its realistic depiction of childhood anxieties and rebellious behavior at a time when many stories for young readers presented a sugar-coated version of life. On June 10, 1928, author and illustrator Maurice Sendak, who revolutionized children’s literature with such best-selling books as Where the Wild Things Are and became one of the most celebrated children’s authors in contemporary history, is born in Brooklyn, New York.

Where the wild things are first edition