Given my well-documented soft spot for all things Maurice Sendak (June 10, 1928–May 8, 2012) and for rare vintage out-of-print gems, imagine my extreme delight over this recent discovery: As if to have any surviving copy of the 1986 gem Posters By Maurice Sendak (public library) weren’t already joyous enough, to have no ordinary copy but a first edition signed by Sendak himself is absolute exaltation. Collected in this magnificent large-format tome are Sendak’s little-known and lovely posters for plays, book fairs, art events, operas, Broadway shows, and other cultural happenings. But, given Sendak’s love of classical literature and the literary greats who became his lifelong influences, most enchanting of all are his posters celebrating the love of books and the joy of reading, many featuring his iconic Wild Things, which I’ve digitized below for our shared enjoyment.

Sendak writes in the introduction:

Posters and other occasional pieces make up a very small part of my picture-making, but, paradoxically, I have a disproportionate affection for these easy images. Why “easy”? They came easy. They were painted in rare moments of relaxation. Often, they were the happy summing up of conglomerate emotions and ideas that had previously been distilled into picture books and theatrical productions. Simply, they were fun to do.

[…]

All of the pictures collected here were done for pleasure, and they are offered up now with the hope that they will give pleasure.

And give they do:

In the altogether wonderful Maurice Sendak: A Celebration of the Artist and His Work (public library) — which also gave us this beautiful personal reflection on Sendak’s lesser-known but exceptional gift as an educator, and which features on its cover none other than the above Sendak poster — design critic extraordinaire Steven Heller writes:

Maurice Sendak is not a poster designer. Well, not one per se, but he made some beautiful posters. . . . The poster is a distinctive genre with its own conventions; it is not simply a blown-up image that is larger than a book or illustration. . . . Posters require forethought and attention to typographic and imagistic details.

[…]

Sendak’s posters were rarely occasions to experiment with entirely new methods. Many poster designers do, as a rule, use the genre to try new vocabularies and styles. On the contrary, Sendak used the extra space to stretch out with his favored characters and allow them a chance to breathe more than they could on a book page.

[…]

Posters are a distinct genre, but after perusing this “small part” of Sendak’s picture making, it is easy to see that in whatever he created, he had the heart of a poster maker, the eye of a book illustrator, and the soul of an artist.

Posters By Maurice Sendak, if you’re able to get a hold of the few used copies floating around, is an irrepressible joy from cover to cover, brimming with Sendak’s heart and soul. Complement it with his forgotten, wonderfully philosophical debut, his darkest yet most truthful and optimistic book, his rare and formative illustrations for Blake’s Songs of Innocence, and his posthumous love letter to the world.