Milton the Early Riser

Robert Kraus was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on June 21, 1925. When he was 10-years-old, he won a cartoon contest staged by the Milwaukee Journal. He received a plaque and had his cartoon printed in the paper. Two years later, the newspaper hired him to produce a weekly cartoon called Public Nuisances. By the time he was 16-years-old, he was selling cartoons to magazines like Esquire and the Saturday Evening Post. He studied at Milwaukee's Layton Art School and the Art Students' League in New York.

After selling a few cartoons to The New Yorker, he was hired by the magazine as a contract artist. He worked there for 15 years and created 21 covers. While there, he started writing and illustrating children's books. His books included All the Mice Came, Leo the Late Bloomer, and Whose Mouse Are You? He left The New Yorker in 1966 and founded Windmill Books. Within a year, the house had won a prestigious Caldecott Medal. After 20 years, he sold Windmill to Simon and Schuster. In 1983, he began a syndicated Sunday comic feature, called Zap! The Video Chap. He died of congestive heart failure on August 7, 2001 at the age of 76.

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