I’m in my mid thirties but I had somehow never managed to read this book. As an adult, I realized from internet discussions that this was a famous, well-loved book.
So my daughter (almost 4) and I were in the library looking for books to read. She loves picture books. We get about 20 of them every time we are at the library and we go through them enough times that I am tired of them by the time they have to go back.
I saw “Where the Wild Things Are” and got excited. Here is a classic, loved by children and adults everywhere, and I get to experience it for the first time along with my daughter! Great!
So one night before bed we sat down and read it.
I finished it.
Silence
So I asked her if she liked it. She gave some kind of non-committal answer that equates to “not really.” I wasn’t sure if my opinion of it influenced her, but I was pretty underwhelmed myself. It is on the floor next to her nightstand and it hasn’t been touched for the last two weeks.
According to the Wikipedia page it is consistently voted one of the best children picture books, but I would have put it dead last in the pile we borrowed from the library. I asked my wife what she thought of it and she said she never thought it was that great either.
I think if you had it as a kid, you probably remember it fondly. More so for the wonderful illustrations and flipping pages and losing yourself in your imagination about a world of friendly monsters than for the text of the story itself. I remember sitting in my bed and turning the pages and looking at the pictures more so than actually reading it and thinking “This is a great tale”.
Then you get older and still have those warm fuzzies and remember the book more charmingly than what you get from reading it for the first time as an adult.
I had the book as a child and I never really liked it.
It was considered a classic back then (mid 70s) and I picked up from the adults around me that it was a great book and that I was supposed to like it, but I didn’t. I thought the main character Max was obnoxious, the story made no sense to me at all and I didn’t like the illustration either.
I re-read it as an adult, thinking I might “get” it now, because, you know, all the adults during my childhood claimed it was great. But no - I still don’t like it… .
I loved the story as a kid. It was read to me by the awesome children’s librarian at the South Brunswick, NJ public library in the 1970’s.
It wasn’t the art I loved, or the wild things. It was the magic beginning in Max’s room, the idea that magic could start somewhere ordinary, or at least that was how I looked at it.
Also, the fact that even though his mother was angry at his behavior, when Max returned, his dinner was “still hot”.
Trivia: It was supposed to be Where the Wild Horses Are, but Sendak couldn’t draw horses well, so he drew wild things that looked like his relatives.
I liked it a lot when I was a kid, but it seems to not be for everyone. My own kids could take it or leave it. One thing I remember clearly was being proud of myself for noticing the way the illustrations expand - it seemed like something an adult would talk about.
While it’s not a truly major selling point, for a great many children (and former children), it’s the first place you’re likely to encounter the word “rumpus”. If you don’t understand why that’s important, I think you may have missed the point of childhood.
I never read it as a child; I’m guessing that was because I was already in fourth or fifth grade when it came out. But my son and I have enjoyed reading it together, which we have done many times.
Back before the book came out, it wasn’t uncommon for people to refer to a rec room as a ‘rumpus room.’ The term has faded from popular usage over the past 50+ years, though.
This book was one my sons clamored for after having had it read to them at one of those Saturday morning library groups.
I believe they liked it so much largely because of the dramatic talents of our story time librarian. When I started reading it to them myself, I was instructed to make it very dramatic. And when I did, they were both very enthusiastic about it.
There’s plenty of imaginative fun in the story, but I think the reader may have to jump start it just a bit for the kids to fully engage with it.
When my older son announced they were having a boy, one of the first books he went looking for in our book stash from his childhood was “Wild Things”, so clearly it made a positive impression on him.
To me, that’s the most heart-achingly beautiful line ever written in a children’s book.
If it doesn’t move you, fine - different strokes for different folks. But that line captures everything that is magical about childhood imagination. It’s a line meant to be read out loud and savored, for the meter, for the alliteration, for the meaning.
Four is probably a little too young to really appreciate the book. And if the parent reading it is merely being dutiful, and isn’t reading the book with their own sense of wonder fully engaged, then of course the kid is going to be like “kthx daddy, what else can you read me?”
I guess the book either speaks to you or it doesn’t. Being able to read that book out loud to my son was one of my greatest aesthetic joys during his early childhood. He loved hearing it, no doubt because he sensed how dazzled I myself was by the language and the story. (But it wasn’t his favorite the way it was mine. “In the Night Kitchen” appealed more to his own sense of style.)
I don’t have any fond memories of this book. It was a book that existed - I think at the library, because we didn’t own it.
My parents never read it to me, I believe I read it on my own in grade school. I’m wondering if my mom thought it would be too scary for me so she didn’t bother.
I was going to say that I’m no in to fantasy and never was, but I was in to Winnie the Pooh and that’s also about a boy doing things with fantasy animals so that idea is invalid.
I adore it, and consider it a very fine prose poem. Max isn’t supposed to be an angel. He IS obnoxious. Little kids are very often obnoxious. They’re little savages. But they know that, and it kind of scares them. This is powerful stuff. Max’s tension between ferocity and fright, fury and love, captures some of the contradictions of his age very well.
Sendak also does some pretty interesting stuff with white space in the book. Near the beginning, there’s a ton of white space: everything is in order, it’s an adult’s world. As the book continues, though, the pictures start breaking out of the frame until they fill the entire page. They only return to frames when Max returns at the end of the book.
I read a crapload of children’s books; this one remains one of my absolute favorites.
My mom says that I did not like this book very much as a small child. I don’t remember specifically, but I suspect I found it a little alarming, and I was probably a little too grounded in realityto appreciate the fantasy element as much as I might have.
On the other hand, both of my children loved the book. They were, and are, very different people. My daughter absolutely loved the pictures and looked at them over and over again; her appreciation of the words, though, was not particularly great. My son, in contrast, wasn’t all that enamored of the pictures. In fact, he would turn over the three pages of pictures in the middle of the book rather quickly and say, “rumpusing…rumpusing…rumpusing.” But he LOVED the story, loved the language, loved the words, and quoted it constantly.
I remember that a close family friend (my “other mother,” in fact) hates it passionately. I thought it was fine, and it’s fun to read aloud. But it’s not my favorite picture book or anything.