Module 2: Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak

Book Cover Image:

www.librarything.com

Book Summary:  This book tells the story of a little boy named Max, who decides to make mischief in his “wolf costume” around the house one quiet evening.  His mother sends Max to his room without supper as a form of punishment, but while he is there, Max’s imagination takes him on a  mysterious journey where a wild forest grows when he sails to the land of the Wild Things. The creatures are a bit frightening-looking, but Maxis not afraid and proves himself to be fiercer than the monsters when he is brave enough to stare them down and ‘look into their yellow eyes without blinking’;  the Wild things make him the king, and they celebrate by dancing all night win a “wild rumpus".  There is only so much dancing one can do, however, and Max becomes homesick and returns to his cozy bedroom to find that his mother has left him his supper  -  and it is still hot!

APA Reference:    Sendak, M. (1963). Where the wild things are. New York, NY: HarperTrophy.

My Impressions:    Maurice Sendak's book is beautifully illustrated and well organized in its development of the story.  It also leaves out much of the dialogue and allows the reader to fill that in with their own imagination as they progress through the book.  Max is just an ordinary boy who most children could relate to.  His mischief-making gets him into a bit of trouble and while isolated to his room without supper, his active imagination kicks in and takes him to an entertaining world where he is not afraid of anything and in fact, is hailed as the leader of the Wild Things.
     Some readers have criticized this book as being too scarey for children, but I am of the opinion that children can relate to Max and his conquering of the Wild; his bravery inspires them to face the challenges they have to deal with in their own lives.

Professional Reviews (2):
Review #1

….the wit and richness of Sendak's drawings, the poetic concision of his story, its empathy and dreamlike lilt, can move me near to tears. If you don't know or remember it: Max, a young boy in a wolf costume, makes mischief of one kind and another, is called ''wild thing'' by his unseen mother, and is sent to bed without supper. As he stews, his room transforms into a jungle. He finds a boat and sets sail across the sea to discover a land full of real wild things -- big monsters with ''terrible teeth'' and ''terrible roars.'' Max tames them, plays with them, sends them to bed without their suppers and then returns home, where he finds dinner waiting for him. ''And it was still hot,'' the book concludes -- a lovely and reassuring grace note.

What an empowering, psychologically astute parable about a child learning that his anger, while sometimes overwhelming and scary, can be safely expressed and eventually conquered, I thought, when I had occasion to reread the book in my 30s. But as a child myself, without benefit of personal insights subsequently gleaned from more than a decade of talk therapy, I had been left cold by ''Where the Wild Things Are.'' I don't really remember why. Maybe I was too literal-minded to be transported by Sendak's dream logic. Not that I didn't like make-believe, but I also liked rules. Old-school fairy tales, with their clear villains and bloody, well-deserved vengeance: that's what worked for me.

Still, when I was a kid, ''Where the Wild Things Are'' was something to be reckoned with, like the mumps. I was 4 when it was published in 1963. I was cognizant that teachers and librarians thought it was a ''good'' book, proved by the shiny Caldecott Medal on its cover. (A budding critic, I had a premature and probably unhealthy interest in consensus.) I don't think my family had a copy, but I remember seeing it in what I now realize were the more cosmopolitan homes on my Northern California cul-de-sac -- the book resides in my possibly exaggerated-for-effect memory as an early '60s progressive totem alongside Danish modern furniture, African art and the sticky, stale-sweet smell of pipe tobacco. I was certainly aware of ''Where the Wild Things Are'' as something I should like, the way I have more recently felt I ought to like Tom Waits and ''30 Rock.''

But once I finally got it -- a convert! -- I was eager to read ''Where the Wild Things Are'' to my own kids. Yet neither Isaac, as you know, nor his older sister, Zoe, much cared for it. I read it to them once or twice; they shrugged; the book got permanently shelved while the bindings cracked on ''Go, Dog. Go!'' and ''The Rainbow Fish.'' I've wondered if another reason I didn't properly love ''Where the Wild Things Are'' as a kid was that anger hadn't been freely expressed in my button-down home; perhaps I had found Sendak's parable less liberating than off-putting or even frightening. (The latter was a common concern when the book was first published.) Conversely, yelling at one another is almost a hobby in my present home, so maybe that's why my own kids found the book -- this is all I could get out of them -- ''boring.'' Perhaps they agreed with Publishers Weekly, which, back in 1963, dismissed Sendak's story as ''pointless and confusing.''

Obviously, many millions of children have loved ''Where the Wild Things Are'' -- there are more than 19 million copies in print around the world -- but I was struck, while conducting an extremely informal survey of a couple of dozen friends and a few professionals in the field of children's literature, by how many said Sendak's work had eluded their younger selves and/or their own offspring. Which kids' books, I had wanted to know, are appreciated more in theory, or by adults, than by actual kids? I never heard a knock against Beverly Cleary and only one against Dr. Seuss. But probably half my sample group had shrugged at ''Where the Wild Things Are.'' ''Impenetrable,'' one educator and critic said. In her view, while the book was written from a child's perspective, it had the processed feel of ''something arrived at years later as a construct to understand the writer's own anger.'' Actually, I think that's what I now like about the book, that sense of self-aware struggle -- and whiff of psychoanalysis. Sendak hinted at this in a 1966 interview with the New Yorker: ''It's only after the act of writing the book that, as an adult, I can see what has happened, and talk about fantasy as catharsis, about Max acting out his anger as he fights to grow. . . . For me, the book was a personal exorcism. It went deeper into my own childhood than anything I've done before.''

Handy, B. (2009). Where the Wild Things Weren't. New York Times Book Review.

[Review of the book Where the wild things Are, by Maurice Sendak].  (2009, October 8).  New York Times, p23.  Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com.

 Review #2:

“I began to read to my grandbaby, Lucia, when she was a few days old. The first book was a typical board book, four words to a page; the second, a typical hardcover with lengthier, playful text. A few pages into the board book, Lucia grew frustrated, so I picked up the hardcover. She settled into my arms, relaxed and satisfied.

Riding home, I puzzled over Lucia’s reaction. What was the difference between those two books, and why did she prefer one over the other? An infant’s focus is slow and a little blurry, so when I read the four words of the board book and then flipped the page, Lucia was just beginning to focus on the illustration. But did that explain all of her frustration? For a tiny baby, seeing is brand new, but hearing is not. I began to think of the sounds Lucia heard before she was born–the naturally lyrical rhythms of conversation. A board book’s staccato voice was foreign to her experience.

Once I got home, I researched how a baby learns language. Two books that were especially helpful are Alison Gopnik, Andrew N. Meltzoff, and Patricia K. Kuhl’s The Scientist in the Crib (Morrow, 1999) and Alison Gopnik’s The Philosophical Baby (Farrar, 2009). I learned that a baby’s hardwired to absorb not just vocabulary, but the rhythms and exchange of conversation and storytelling. These rhythms come first, which is why the “cooing” of a Chinese baby sounds different from the cooing of a German baby. Musicality is particularly engaging. It’s upbeat and offbeat, fun to improvise and read out loud, with repetition and refrain, and plenty of toe-tapping, lip-smacking sounds–razzmatazz! Even if a baby hasn’t yet learned what the words mean, the sound is delicious.

Lucia continued to teach me what babies like. Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are was her first favorite. As we read, she picks at the words with her fingers, The words themselves interest her. Why? In Wild Things, the words are often separate from the illustration, black words standing out on a white page. Does Lucia’s interest reflect a baby’s focus on “edge?” Is it because the black words stand out like tiny black ants and Lucia wonders whether they can be picked up? Is it because Lucia sees where I’m looking? Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. The mere fact that dark words appear surrounded by white space captures the attention of a young child.

If razzmatazz engages a baby, it’s important to remember that it’s a style of writing, not a story and usually, not a book. One of my editors, Patti Gauch, reminded me that any good book for children “must have something moving in its bones.” It must begin somewhere and go somewhere, giving a delicious “razzmatazz of words” a sense of drama and tension…..”

Joosse, B. (2010).  Razzmatazz: Books that engage and delight the very youngest listeners.

[Review of the book Where the wild things are, by Maurice Sendak].  (2010, August 1).  School Library Journal,  56(8), 18-19. Retrieved from www.schoollibrary.com.

Library Uses:  I would expand upon the use of this book for Children’s Hour by exploring some of the  feelings or questions they might have about their parents and how they feel about parental authority.  They could pretend to be the parents and set down some imaginary rules about bedtime or rough play in the house.
 You might also ask them what the land of the Wild Things would be like…describe the creatures, the jungle, the noises.  They could further develop their imaginations by doing a craft where they take paper plates and various scraps such as yarn, materials, google eyes, etc and design a Wild Thing of their own.  A parade of monsters at the end of the session might also be fun!