RIP Maurice Sendak

I'm not gonna pretend I give more of a shit about Where the Wild Things Are than the next guy, but via my superslice Collecting Children's Books I see this little gem:

What makes this book so valuable? Is it because the lead author, Dr. Maxwell Leigh Eidenoff, was part of the Atomic Bomb Project at Columbia University and the University of Chicago?

No, it has more to do with the fact that its co-author, Hyman Ruchlis, was a science teacher at Brooklyn’s Lafayette High School.

While working on the book, Mr. Ruchlis asked one of his students at Lafayette High, a gifted young artist, if he would provide the illustrations for the volume. The student agreed to do the artwork in exchange for $100 and -- now here’s a kid after my own heart -- a passing grade in class.

This kid also got his name on the title page:

ATOMICS FOR THE MILLIONS was the first-ever book illustrated by Maurice Sendak. He was only nineteen when it was published and it would be another four years before he illustrated his first children's book, THE WONDERFUL FARM by Marcel Aymé.

The rest of the post runs through the amazing versatility of his work as an illustrator.