Children’s author and master illustrator Maurice Sendak (1928–2012) was born on this day in Brooklyn, New York. The son of Eastern European Jewish immigrants, Sendak was a sickly child who spent long hours indoors, discovering his passion for drawing and storytelling early in life.

Inspired by Walt Disney and William Blake, he began his career in 1948 designing window displays at F.A.O. Schwarz. His earliest illustrations appeared in The Wonderful Farm (1951) and A Hole Is to Dig (1952).

“You cannot write for children,” he once explained. “They’re much too complicated. You can only write books that are of interest to them.”

With the groundbreaking Where the Wild Things Are (1963), Sendak gave the world Max, a young mischief-maker sent to bed without supper who sailed away to become king of the wild things. He followed with more imaginative works like In the Night Kitchen (1970), where young Mickey fell into a dreamscape batter of dreams and imagination.

Sendak rejected moralizing. “I never wrote a book where I taught a lesson,” he said. Instead, his stories celebrated wonder, mischief, and the emotional complexity of childhood. “These are difficult times for children,” he said. “They have to be brave to survive what the world does to them.”

Though sometimes controversial, his bold vision captured the heart of children around the world. Beyond books, he designed for opera and ballet, leaving behind a lasting celebration of imagination and truth.