Ursula Nordstrom discovered Maurice Sendak

Maurice Sendak was a 22-year-old window display helper at F.A.O. Schwarz when Ursula Nordstrom, the head of the children's department at Harper & Brothers (now HarperCollins) met him in approximately 1951. She looked at some of his sketches and hired him the very next day to illustrate The Wonderful Farm by Marcel Ayme. She continued to send him contracts to illustrate books and was delighted in 1963, when he told her he was working on his own picture book. She published Where the Wild Things Are later that year.