Where the Wild Things Are

My 8 year old says they read the book in school “a long time ago”. I had never heard of it until seeing the trailer and reading about it here. Must say the trailer – or rather the soundtrack – is very moving.

I did see a couple of things in Wikipedia which made me sit up and pay attention though:

Francis Spufford suggests that the book is “one of the very few picture books to make an entirely deliberate, and beautiful, use of the psychoanalytic story of anger”.

and

Sendak, in his book the Art of Maurice Sendak, discusses Where the Wild Things Are, In the Night Kitchen, and Outside Over There as books in a trilogy [8] centered on Children’s growth, survival, change and fury.

“are all variations on the same theme: how children master various feelings…”

Obviously I hadn’t thought about the book enough. The interpretation that it’s a story about how children master anger is an incredibly powerful one. And the knowledge that Sendak can express this in nine sentences makes me shake my head in awe.

Jessica, this link goes to a list of search results for the hardcover.

*excited*
Thank-you Steve

Well, I don’t remember reading WTWTA as a child, and as an adolescent, I was rather unimpressed with Sendak’s illustations, my tastes running more along the line of Beatrix Potter and Eloise Wilkin.
However, as an adult now, I am willing to enter into a discussion about the merits of the story; just want you all to know that I will be coming from the direction of the film primarily. ( I’m looking forward to seeing that!)

In an interview between Bill Moyers and Maurice Sendak.

Moyers talking of Joseph Campbell, once said that one of the great moments in literature is this scene in WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE: “And when he came to the place where the wild things are, they roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws till Max said, ‘Be still’ and tamed them with the magic trick of staring into all their yellow eyes without blinking once. And they were frightened and called him the most wild thing of all and made him king of all wild things.”

Joseph Campbell read. And he said, “That is a great moment because it’s only when a man tames his own demons that he becomes the king of himself if not of the world.” And he said that was a great moment in literature.

My students (upper elementary) still like to roar their terrible roars and gnash their terrible teeth when I read this book to them each year. They get into lively discussions about the passage of time in the story and whether the trip was real or not. (And if it’s all in Max’s head, why on earth should that mean that it is not real?) I also use it to model writing strategies such as effective use of repetition.

I remember always liking this book as a child. deacondon you raise an interesting point. I’d sort of like to see this movie, BUT I do remember being thoroughly unimpressed with the film Polar Express. The book was lovely, but the movie felt forced and uninspired to me.
RR’s point about anger is really interesting. It’s important for children to learn how to process and deal with anger, and I think the book is helpful to that end. The book also depicts a boy in a situation in which he feels pretty powerless moving, via his imagination, into a place where he does have power. The adults having all of the power is one of the most frustrating aspects of being a kid and that’s why the imagination is so crucial for them (though for us adults too, of course).
Cute story, one of my nephews, Nicholas, loves this book. He’s a very wild boy, and his terrible twos were quite terrible indeed. His mom used to always read him this book and change the name Max to Nicholas because he loved the book so much. When Nick got a little older, he learned that the boy in the story was really named Max and was mad, his name is supposed to be Nicholas!!