Max walks through the forest, coming soon upon a ‘private boat’ that he takes across the ocean to ‘where the wild things are’. His room becomes one with a surrounding forest. In his bedroom, Max’s rage continues, but soon trees begin to grow from the floor and the walls begin to disappear. His mother, never seen in the story, is unsympathetic and shouts at Max that he is a ‘WILD THING!’ Max responds by shouting back, ‘I’LL EAT YOU UP!’ Because of this, he is sent to bed ‘without eating anything’. This includes chasing the dog about with a fork. He is wearing his wolf-suit and making mischief about the house. It inspired some to suggest that ‘it is perhaps time to separate from the word ‘children’s’ and deal with his work as an explorative art, purely and only seemingly simple’ (Braun, 1970, p.52).Īs the lavishly illustrated book opens, we meet the main protagonist, Max, a young boy armed with a very large hammer. Barack Obama recently told a White House crowd that Where the Wild Things Are is one of his favourite books. Although just 10 sentences long, it has become acknowledged as a masterpiece of children’s literature, inspiring operas, ballets, songs and film adaptations (the most recent of which is released this month). Published in 1963, Where the Wild Things Are is the first and best-known part of what Sendak described as a trilogy. The book Maurice Sendak’s works have enormous popular appeal and have been purchased and read by tens of millions of adults to their children over the years. For me, this book and Maurice Sendak’s other works are fascinating studies of intense emotions – disappointment, fury, even cannibalistic rage – and their transformation through creative activity. The question I am obsessed with is How do children survive?’ (Marcus, 2002, pp.170–171).Īccording to the writer Francis Spufford, Where the Wild Things Are is ‘one of the very few picture books to make an entirely deliberate, and beautiful, use of the psychoanalytic story of anger’ (Spufford, 2003, p.60). Author Maurice Sendak once said: ‘I only have one subject.
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