Maurice Sendak, the writer and illustrator of “Where the Wild Things Are,” did the cover artwork of the 1969 November issue of what was then called The Children’s Friend, a magazine for young readers of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Mackenzi Lee was an intern at the children’s magazine when, while rummaging through archives of past issues one afternoon, she happened to recognize the artist’s hand on one of the covers.
“That looks a lot like Maurice Sendak art,” she wrote in a 2013 blog post that was recently re-published by Dawning of a Brighter Day. When she opened the front cover and discovered Sendak’s name, she was elated.
There was one thing, though, that puzzled Lee — why would Sendak, a “Caldecott-winning artist and outspoken atheist” — do the cover art for an LDS magazine?
No one seemed to know the answer.
But Lee, a lover of mysteries whether it be Agatha Christie or Nancy Drew, was determined to find out. Searching for the painting online, she eventually came across the Rosenbach Museum, which had collected Sendak’s works following his death. From there, she traced the painting to its original owner, Justin Schiller.
Lee smelled victory.
But it was not to be. Schiller purchased the painting from Sendak in 1970, but didn't know more about the painting than Lee did.
“All I can recall was that Maurice told me at the time he had a friend associated with the magazine who asked him to illustrate a cover design. I do not recall the name of the friend ever being mentioned,” he told Lee in an email.
Hoping to discover who that friend was, Lee searched the staff names in the November 1969 issue’s table of contents, obtained their records and started calling. One recipient of Lee’s inquiries supplied her with the answer she craved.
“It was my mom,” the man told her. He knew the whole story.
“In the 1960s, Gladys Daines was the managing editor of the Children’s Friend. In 1962, she had bought a copy of 'Where the Wild Things Are' and fallen in love with its boxy, whimsical art,” Lee said in her blog post. “So, bold as brass, she called up Maurice Sendak and asked to visit him. She flew to his house in New York and they had a good chat and hit it off.”
Sendak was more than willing to do the cover of the magazine when asked, though he held onto the original artwork since he was such a prominent illustrator, Lee said. Usually, the Friend kept the art it commissioned.
Lee is now a New York Times best-selling author of the young adult book “The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue,” and has received numerous awards for her debut novel, “The Monstrous Thing.”