Where the Wild Things Are

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

Maurice Sendak’s classic, Where the Wild Things Are, explored the whimsical imagination of rebellious Max. After slipping into his wolf costume and causing disorder in his household, Max’s mother sends him to bed without supper. While pouting in his room, Max’s imagination soon comes to life as his bedroom transforms into a forest filled with seas and mysterious creatures called “the wild things”. Max’s courage against the wild things’ fearful demeanor causes them to declare him king. After many rumpuses and adventures through this unknown world, Max becomes homesick and makes the blunt decision to return home. After a year’s long journey, Max arrives home to his plain bedroom and a hot meal waiting on the bedside table.

…where he found his supper waiting for him 
and it was still hot.

Where the Wild Things Are incorporated the distortion of illustration and text to make a literary and artistic statement. At the beginning of the story, the reader is introduced to the dull real world, in which illustrations are constricted to sharp, square formatting. Text also sat alone on blank white pages. As Max journeys into the creative world of the wild things, the illustrations soon become larger and break out of the original uniformed shape, while text remained at the bottom of each page. By the end of the book, the illustrations span over entire pages, however the final page was blank with stand-alone text. This final formatting technique almost signals the presence of Max’s imagination in the real world.

Sendak’s outlandish creation holds a great amount of philosophical meaning. The imaginative nature of the book causes the reader, mainly children, to question whether Max’s journey was fictitious or did his imagination come to life. Throughout the story, the break away from normality almost praises rebellion and encourages the release of creativity. Adolescent readers may perceive Where the Wild Things Are as a stepping stone for allowing imagination to roam wild and breaking away from dull standards that keep them in check.