Where the Wild Things Are

Could you win a staring contest (no blinking allowed) with monsters in order to become King? Max did, and on October 16th, we will be able to see the story of Max in the much anticipated “Where the Wild Things Are” movie in the States.

I’ve come full circle with the book “Where the Wild Things Are.” Someone gave it to me for my 6th birthday, and I was so scared just from looking at the pictures that I couldn’t sleep. It collected dust on a bookshelf for several years and when I was about 9, I read it (the whole book is only 10 sentences long). It soon became one of my favorites. Now my own son, who is 8 years old, wants to see the movie when it is released.

If you are unfamiliar with the story, the official YouTube page describes it best: It is a “Maurice Sendak classic children’s story, where Max, a disobedient little boy sent to bed without his supper, creates his own world–a forest inhabited by ferocious wild creatures that crown Max as their ruler.” The book was originally published in 1963 and according to Wikipedia; it is “generally regarded as a masterpiece of American illustrated children’s literature.”

It is interesting to me that acclaimed children’s author, Francis Spufford, believes 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.” I never thought that, but I did think that the wolf costume that Max wore the whole time was cool.

Here’s an interesting tidbit – the original concept used horses instead of monsters. When the publisher realized he couldn’t draw horses, they switched it to monsters (based on caricatures of his aunts and uncles) since he was familiar with drawing those.

Something tells me that this movie is going to freak me out, but I can’t resist, I have to go see it, for old-time-sake and to pass the torch to my own son.