Where the Wild Things Are is
a 1963 children's picture book by
American writer and illustrator Maurice Sendak,
originally published by Harper & Row. The
book has been adapted into other media several times, including an animated
short in 1974 (with an updated version in 1988); a 1980
opera; and a live-action 2009
feature-film adaptation, directed by Spike Jonze. The book had
sold over 19 million copies worldwide as of 2009, with 10 million of those
being in the United States.
Sendak
won the annual Caldecott
Medal from the children's librarians in 1964, recognizing Wild Things as the previous year's
"most distinguished American picture book for children". It was
voted the number one picture book in a 2012 survey of School Library Journal readers, not for
the first time.
Plot
This
story of only 338 words focuses on a young boy named Max who, after dressing in
his wolf costume, wreaks such havoc through his household that he is sent to
bed without his supper. Max's bedroom undergoes a mysterious transformation
into a jungle environment, and he winds up sailing to an island inhabited by
malicious beasts known as the "Wild Things." After successfully
intimidating the creatures, Max is hailed as the king of the Wild Things and
enjoys a playful romp with his subjects. However, he starts to feel lonely and
decides to return home, to the Wild Things' dismay. Upon returning to his
bedroom, Max discovers a hot supper waiting for him.
Development
Sendak
began his career as an illustrator, but by the mid-1950s he had decided to
start both writing and illustrating his own books. In 1956, he published
his first book for which he was the sole author, Kenny's Window (1956). Soon after, he began work on another
solo effort. The story was supposed to be that of a child who, after a tantrum,
is punished in his room and decides to escape to the place that gives the book
its title, the "land of wild horses". Shortly before starting
the illustrations, Sendak realized he did not know how to draw horses and, at
the suggestion of his editor, changed the wild horses to the more ambiguous
"Wild Things", a term inspired by the Yiddish expression
"vilde chaya" ("wild animals"), used to indicate boisterous
children.
He
replaced the horses with caricatures of his aunts and uncles, caricatures that
he had originally drawn in his youth as an escape from their chaotic weekly
visits, on Sunday afternoons, to his family's Brooklyn home. Sendak, as a
child, had observed his relatives as being "all crazy – crazy faces and
wild eyes", with blood-stained eyes and "big and yellow" teeth,
who pinched his cheeks until they were red. These relatives, like Sendak's
parents, were poor Jewish immigrants from Poland, whose remaining family in
Europe were killed during the Holocaust while Sendak
was in his early teens. As a child, however, he saw them only as
"grotesques".
When
working on the 1983 opera
adaptation of the book with Oliver Knussen, Sendak
gave the monsters the names of his relatives: Tzippy, Moishe, Aaron, Emile, and
Bernard.
Literary significance
According
to Sendak, at first, the book was banned in libraries and received negative
reviews. It took about two years for librarians and teachers to realize that
children were flocking to the book, checking it out over and over again, and
for critics to relax their views. Since then, it has received high
critical acclaim. 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". Mary
Pols of Time magazine wrote that "[w]hat
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,' balancing the seesaw of fear
and comfort." New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis noted
that "there are different ways to read the wild things, through a Freudian or colonialist prism,
and probably as many ways to ruin this delicate story of a solitary child
liberated by his imagination." In Selma G. Lanes's book The Art of Maurice Sendak, Sendak
discusses Where the Wild Things Are along
with his other books In the Night Kitchen and Outside Over There as a sort of trilogy centered on
children's growth, survival, change, and fury. He indicated that the three
books are "all variations on the same theme: how children master various
feelings – danger, boredom, fear, frustration, jealousy – and manage to come to
grips with the realities of their lives."
Based
on a 2007 online poll, the National
Education Association named the book one of its "Teachers' Top
100 Books for Children". Five years later School Library Journalsponsored a survey
of readers which identified Where the Wild
Things Are as top picture book. Elizabeth Bird, the NYPL librarian
who conducted the survey, observed that there was little doubt it would be
voted number one and highlighted its designation by one reader as a watershed,
"ushering in the modern age of picture books". Another called it
"perfectly crafted, perfectly illustrated ... simply the epitome of a
picture book" and noted that Sendak "rises above the rest in part
because he is subversive". President Barack Obama has
read it aloud for children attending the White House
Easter Egg Roll in multiple years.
Despite
the book's popularity, Sendak refused to produce a sequel; four months before
his death in 2012, he told comedian Stephen Colbert that
one would be "the most boring idea imaginable".
Adaptations
An
animated short based on the book, which had taken five years to complete, was
released in 1973, directed by Gene Deitch and
produced at Krátký Film, Prague,
for Weston
Woods Studios. Two versions were released: the original 1973 version, with
narration by Allen
Swift and a musique concrète score
composed by Deitch himself; and an updated version in 1988 with new music and
narration by Peter
Schickele.
In the
1980s, Sendak worked with British composer Oliver Knussen on a
children's opera based on the book. The opera received its first
(incomplete) performance in Brussels in 1980; the
first complete performance of the final version was given by the Glyndebourne Touring Opera in
London in 1984. This was followed by its first U.S. performance in Saint Paul,
Minnesota, in 1985 and the New York City premiere by New York City Opera in
1987. A concert performance was given at The Proms in the Royal Albert Hall in
London in 2002. A concert production was produced by New York City Opera
in spring 2011.
In
1983, the Walt Disney
Studio conducted a series of tests of computer-generated
imagery created by Glen Keane and John Lasseter using
as their subject Where the Wild Things Are.
In
1999, Isadar released
a solo piano musical composition titled "Where the Wild Things Are"
which appeared on his album Active
Imagination, inspired by the Sendak book. The composition was revisited
and re-recorded in 2012 on Isadar's album, Reconstructed,
with Grammy winner
and founder of Windham
Hill Records, William
Ackerman, producing.
The
live-action film version of the book is directed by Spike Jonze. It was
released on October 16, 2009. The film stars Max Records as Max and
features Catherine
Keener as his mother, with Lauren Ambrose, Chris Cooper, Paul Dano, James Gandolfini, Catherine O'Hara and Forest Whitaker providing
the voices of the principal Wild Things. The soundtrack was written and
produced by Karen O and Carter Burwell. The
screenplay was adapted by Jonze and Dave Eggers. Sendak was
one of the producers for the film. The screenplay was novelized by Eggers
as The Wild Things, published in 2009.
In
2012, indie rock quartet alt-J released
the song "Breezeblocks",
inspired in part by the book. Alt-J keyboardist Gus Unger-Hamilton said
the story and the song share similar ideas about parting with a loved one.
"Breezeblocks" reached certified ARIA Gold status in
Australia.
In
2016, Alessia Cara released
her second single, "Wild Things",
which charted at number fifty on the Billboard Hot 100. In an interview with ABC News Radio, Cara
stated she took inspiration from Where the
Wild Things Are, saying "each 'Thing' represents an emotion and
[the main character] kinda escapes into this world ... and that's kinda what I
wanted to do"