9 Surprising Insights into Maurice Sendak's Life and Legacy

Maurice Sendak’s childhood experiences deeply influenced his writing: a time shadowed by the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby, the tragic loss of much of his extended family in concentration camps, and parents overwhelmed by depression and anger. Born on June 10, 1928, Sendak rejected the idea of writing lighthearted tales of happiness. Instead, he committed to reflecting the darker, more complex realities of life in his work. Below are a few more surprising facts about the author’s own life.

1. Maurice Sendak was responsible for designing the iconic window displays at F.A.O. Schwarz.

In 1948, Maurice Sendak and his brother visited F.A.O. Schwarz in Manhattan with hopes of selling their handcrafted, fairytale-inspired wooden toys. While the store declined to purchase the toys for production, they were impressed by Sendak’s artistic talent and offered him a job creating window displays. Sendak worked there for three years while studying at the New York Art Students League.

2. The initial concept for Where the Wild Things Are was actually Where the Wild Horses Are

Originally, Where the Wild Horses Are was meant to revolve around horses. Editor Ursula Nordstrom fell in love with the title, considering it to be poetic and enchanting. However, there was a major issue: Sendak wasn’t able to draw horses. When he shared this with his editor, he remembered her ‘acid-tinged’ response: 'Maurice, what can you draw?'

‘Things,’ he replied, and so he drew ‘things.’

Fun fact: Ursula Nordstrom also edited a number of beloved classics like The Giving Tree, Goodnight Moon, Harold and the Purple Crayon, and Charlotte’s Web, just to name a few. Quite the impressive list of achievements.

3. The ‘things’ that Sendak created were influenced by his immigrant relatives and the way he saw them through the eyes of a child.

“They were disheveled; their teeth were terrifying. Hair spilling out of their noses.” Although the creatures in Where the Wild Things Are were based on Sendak’s family members, they weren’t named after them. In fact, the ‘things’ didn’t receive names until the book was adapted into an opera. Sendak recalled in 2009, “We had to give them names to help the actors figure out who was messing up. They had Jewish names: Moishe, Schmuel. But those names were dropped after the opera. They never had names until they became movie stars.”

4. A significant portion of Sendak’s extended family perished in concentration camps.

It wasn’t until later in life that Sendak realized just how fortunate his surviving immigrant relatives were—and how lucky he was to be alive. Most of his extended family died in concentration camps, a fact his father learned on the day of Sendak’s bar mitzvah. “My father belonged to a Jewish social club. The day of my bar mitzvah, he got word [through the club] that he no longer had a family,” Sendak told The Guardian in 2011. “Everyone was gone. And he laid down in bed. I remember this so vividly. And my mother said to me, ‘Papa can’t come.’ And I was having the big party at the colonial club, the old mansion in Brooklyn. And I said, ‘How can Papa not come to my bar mitzvah?’ And I screamed at him, ‘You gotta get up, you gotta get up!’ And of course, he did.”

When unknowing guests burst into singing ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow’ as Mr. Sendak entered, Maurice knew something was terribly wrong, just by the look on his father’s face. “My father’s face was vivid, livid, and I knew I had done something very bad, that I had made him suffer more than he had to,” Sendak said. “This 13-year-old ersatz man.”

5. Even if Where the Wild Things Are hadn’t become such a sensation, Sendak’s work would still have reached you.

Before the success of his own books, Sendak illustrated the beloved Little Bear series by Else Holmelund Minarik.

6. Sendak’s 1970 book In the Night Kitchen is often banned.

Although many parents and libraries initially objected to Where the Wild Things Are being too frightening for children, it was his later book, In the Night Kitchen, that found itself on the American Library Association’s list of frequently challenged and banned books. The story centers around a young boy named Mickey, who is nude for much of the book—likely because the events are happening in a dream.

“Have you never had a dream where you were completely naked?” Sendak responded when Stephen Colbert asked him about the nudity in the book. (Colbert: “No.” Sendak: “I think you’re a man of little imagination.”) Due to Mickey’s full-frontal nudity and some of his actions, like jumping into a milk bottle and sliding down it, critics have called the book inappropriate for children. It was ranked No. 24 on the ALA’s list of frequently banned books from 2000–2009.

7. The Lindbergh baby kidnapping had a profound impact on Sendak.

Sendak believed that the kidnapping of aviator Charles Lindbergh’s young son had a profound impact on his childhood, his work, and his overall outlook on life. Despite being only 3 years old when the incident occurred in 1932, he vividly recalls the details, including hearing Mrs. Lindbergh’s heartbreaking plea over the radio to the kidnappers, asking them to rub camphor on her child’s chest to prevent his cold from worsening. “Because if that baby died, I had no chance,” Sendak reflected. “I was just a poor kid, OK? [When the Lindbergh baby was found dead,] I think something really fundamental died in me.” In 2008, Sendak exchanged one of his drawings for a miniature souvenir replica of the ladder used by convicted kidnapper and murderer Bruno Hauptmann. He said, “That ends my obsession with the case,” in an interview with The New York Times.

8. He strongly disliked eBooks.

To say that Sendak had a distaste for eBooks would be an understatement: “F*** them is what I say; I hate those e-books. They cannot be the future ... they may well be. I will be dead, I won’t give a s***!”

9. Sendak never came out to his parents.

Sendak never shared with his parents that he was gay. “All I wanted was to be straight so my parents could be happy,” he told The New York Times in 2008. “They never, never, never knew.” Eugene Glynn, Sendak’s partner of 50 years, passed away in 2007; Sendak himself died in 2012 at the age of 83 due to complications from a stroke.