In 1956, Sendak published his first “solo” book, Kerry’s Window. Singer‘s collection Zlateh the Goat, a retelling of Eastern European Jewish folktales. Sendak drew pictures for children’s books for most of the 1950s, notably illustrating I.B. Following a 1951 meeting with an editor at Harper, he illustrated his first picture book, and soon became a popular and in-demand illustrator of other people’s books–most famously the Little Bear series. Sendak’s first professional commissions, in the late 1940s, included contributing illustrations to a textbook, Atomics for the Millions, and creating window displays for the toy store F.A.O. It is most frequently seen in his costumes and scenery, and in his nonlinear storytelling with Yiddish-specked sentences. He later drew on these childhood stories for his source material, and in much of his work there is a shadow of old Eastern European shtetl life. Listening to these stories, his father’s “old country” became, for young Maurice, a mythical place, both adored and feared. Early in life, he developed health problems and was forced to remain in bed for much of his youth, accompanied only by books, his own imagination, and his father’s stories. The child of Polish, Jewish immigrants, Sendak was born in Brooklyn in 1928. Photo courtesy of Spike55151 Brooklyn Born
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