Where The Wild Things Are
by Maurice Sendak

Genre: Action & Adventure
Age: 1-5
Length: 48
First Published: 1963

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Malinda’s Review

Rating

Where The Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak is a longer picture book with forty-eight pages. I love the artwork for this book. It does a wonderful job depicting what “wild things” might look like with simple pencil-colored drawings with texture. There aren’t a crazy amount of words in this story either. Young readers will follow the story easily and enjoy combing through the pages.

The young boy in the story represents the wild side of most younger readers. Fearless and ready to conquer the world with wild ideas, fantastic imaginations, and rambunctious play.

I enjoyed the boy’s imagination in this story. Children would love for their rooms to turn into imaginary places they conjure up. Places with a wild forest of endless trees, hanging vines to swing on, and adventures around every corner and across every sea. Only to rule over any mysterious land they beach on and master the local wildlife with rules set by themselves.

What I didn’t enjoy about this story is the boy’s disrespect for his mom. Disrespect shouldn’t be taught. However, the boy does get punished and sent to his room. Parents can use this moment to talk with their children about the boy’s actions and why they are wrong. Never underestimate the lessons your child is learning through the books they read.

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Publisher’s Description

Maurice Sendak’s Caldecott Medal-winning picture book has become one of the most highly acclaimed and best-loved children’s books of all time. A must for every child’s bookshelf.

This iconic story has inspired a movie, an opera, and the imagination of generations. When Max dresses in his wolf suit and causes havoc in the house, his mother sends him to bed. From there, Max sets sail to an island inhabited by the Wild Things, who name him king and share a wild rumpus with him. But then from far away across the world, Max smells good things to eat…

Let the wild rumpus continue as this classic comes to life like never before with new reproductions of Maurice Sendak’s artwork. Astonishing state-of-the-art technology faithfully captures the color and detail of the original illustrations. Sendak himself enthusiastically endorsed this impressive new interpretation of his art. 

Mary Pols of Time magazine wrote that “what makes Sendak’s book so compelling is its grounding effect: Max has a tantrum and in a flight of fancy visits his wild side, but he is pulled back by a belief in parental love to a supper ‘still hot.” Generations have shared this beautiful picture book, and children of all ages will want to return to it again and again.

• New York Public Library’s #4 book on the list of “Top Check Outs of All Time”
• One of the National Education Association’s “Teachers’ Top 100 Books for Children”
• The top picture book in School Library Journal’s survey of its readers 

Maurice Sendak was also the creator of such classics as In the Night Kitchen, Outside Over There, Higglety Pigglety Pop!, and Nutshell Library.

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About Maurice Sendak

For more than forty years, the books Maurice Sendak has written and illustrated have nurtured children and adults alike and have challenged established ideas about what children’s literature is and should be. The New York Times has recognized that Sendak’s work “has brought a new dimension to the American children’s book and has helped to change how people visualize childhood.” Parenting recently described Sendak as “indisputably, the most revolutionary force in children’s books.”

Winner of the 1964 Caldecott Medal for Where the Wild Things Are, in 1970 Sendak became the first American illustrator to receive the international Hans Christian Andersen Award, given in recognition of his entire body of work. In 1983, he received the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award from the American Library Association, also given for his entire body of work.

Beginning in 1952, with A Hole Is to Dig by Ruth Krauss, Sendak’s illustrations have enhanced many texts by other writers, including the Little Bear books by Else Holmelund Minarik, children’s books by Isaac Bashevis Singer and Randall Jarrell, and The Juniper Tree and Other Tales from Grimm. Dear Mili, Sendak’s interpretation of a newly discovered tale by Wilhelm Grimm, was published to extraordinary acclaim in 1988.

In addition to Where the Wild Things Are (1963), Sendak has both written and illustrated

The Nutshell Library (1962), Higglety Pigglety Pop! (1967), In the Night Kitchen (1970), Outside Over There (1981), and, We Are All in the Dumps with Jack and Guy (1993). He also illustrated Swine Lake (1999), authored by James Marshall, Brundibar (2003), by Tony Kushner, Bears (2005), by Ruth Krauss and, Mommy? (2006), his first pop-up book, with paper engineering by Matthew Reinhart and story by Arthur Yorinks.

Since 1980, Sendak has designed the sets and costumes for highly regarded productions of Mozart’s The Magic Flute and Idomeneo, Janacek’s The Cunning Little Vixen, Prokofiev’s

The Love for Three Oranges, Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker, and Hans Krása’s Brundibár.

In 1997, Sendak received the National Medal of Arts from President Clinton. In 2003 he received the first Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, an international prize for children’s literature established by the Swedish government. Maurice Sendak was born in Brooklyn in 1928. He now lives in Connecticut.