At a time when chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture was filled with pic­ture-per­fect fam­i­lies, Mar­i­lyn Sachs paint­ed a dark­er, rich­er reality.

In some pho­tographs he looks like a fright­ened child; in oth­ers he is quite hand­some, almost sul­try, albeit in a boy­ish way. He had large, expres­sive, dark eyes and wore his black hair slicked back in the style of 1930s adolescence.