Where the Wild Things Are

Sendak, Maurice. Where the Wild Things Are. Harper & Row, 1963. 40 pages.

Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, told from the perspective of a third person narrator, takes readers into the mind of young Max. Max is a mischievous child who is sent to bed one night without supper. As the story progresses, Max’s bedroom begins to transform into a forest, and then Max travels to where the wild things are. As this transformation progresses, we see that the illustrations are gradually becoming larger, until they fill up both pages entirely. Max proceeds to dance and party with the wild things, and they see him as their king. When Max gets lonely, he returns home to his bedroom, and he finds supper sitting there waiting for him.

“And he sailed back over a year and in and out of weeks and through a day and into the night of his very own room where he found his supper waiting for him and it was still hot.”

The illustrations in this book add depth and context to the text. The author creates a sense of balance throughout the book as the images expand to maximum size near the middle of the book, and then shrink down again. The texture of the illustrations is also significant; Sendak uses a combination of watercolors with pen and ink to create an array of textures. The texture is most prominent in the fur of the wild things, and on the walls and door of Max’s bedroom. The illustrations may seem a bit scary for young children, but that is Sendak’s style. These illustrations are representations of a child’s imagination. Along with the compelling illustrations, Sendak uses repetition, a common element in children’s books. We see this repetition mostly when the forest is growing in Max’s bedroom. The use of repetition and texture in his illustrations helps Sendak to create a world that he is bringing young readers into.

This book can be considered philosophical, much like many other children’s picture books. The branch of philosophy that is relevant to this particular book is Epistemology. This book could raise a lot of questions in the mind of a child about what is real. Readers are left to decide if the place where the wild things are is a real place, or if it is simply real to Max because it is in his imagination. Another interpretation of this book is that Max is dreaming about going to where the wild things are, therefore raising the question, are dreams real? Aside from allowing it’s readers to question reality, this book also has some moral and cultural lessons to be learned. From this book, a child can learn that their parents will always be there for them, even when they behave badly. Children also learn to appreciate their parents in this book through the loneliness that Max feels when he is away from home. This award-winning book is used worldwide for philosophical discussions like this.