“Where the Wild
Things Are”
By: Maurice Sendak
Illustrations by
Maurice Sendak
The Genre in this children’s picture book has
mild thematic elements. There are several genres in this book. It has Adventure,
Action, Family, Fantasy, Brief Language and Drama. The genre used is story
telling.
Story Elements are the Setting is max’s bedroom where his
imagination runs wild, he sails to the wild things and his fantasy journey
begins. The setting is in a bedroom, an ocean and a forest. The author captures
a verbal and visual map of the fantasy word. In this fantasy world it is rich
in details as his room grows into a forest. He goes through the forest, climbs
in a boat, and set sail over the ocean to another forest, where the wild things
live. Then he backtracks out of the forest where the wild things are, back into
the boat, over the oceans, and back through the forest into his room.
The Plot
of the book is based on fantasy; it is
Max, who puts on a wolf’s costume runs around his house making mischief.
His mother angrily calls him a wild thing and sends him to his room without any
supper. While there his room turns into a forest, then out of his imagination
he boards a boat in the wild sea and enters the land of make-believe in the
land of the Wild Things. They are very scary monster but Max is the scariest of
them all. Max is made the king of the Wild Things; he dances and has wild
rumpuses with the Wild Things. But he gets homesick and lonely and gets back in
his boat had heads home to a warm supper waiting in his bedroom. The plot is
consistent as he travels from his room to where the wild things are then
travels from where the wild things are back home to his room.
The
Characters are Max, his mother and the Wild Things. The character grows during
the course of the story. The character Max lives in a realistic story world and
because of anger he enters into a fantasy situation. His character is typical
of a young boy who in the beginning of the story chases the dog, builds a play
tent and fuses with his mother but Max takes it a step further when he lets his
anger grow into a fantasy world where it is O.K. to be as angry as you want to.
Where there are no rules and he does not have to listen to anyone he is the
king in his fantasy world and everyone must listen to him.
The
Style of the book is simple sentences that are sometimes
split between two pages. In the beginning and the end of the books most of the
writing is on one side of the book while the illustration is on the opposite
side. When the sentences are split it encourages the reader to continue to the
next page. This keeps the reader engaged in the book. The style and images are
rich with vivid figurative language.
The
Theme is re-occurring throughout the book. Example of this would be,
“Through night and in and out of weeks and almost over a year.” This is said in
the beginning and the end of the book. Another example would be “They roared
their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible
eyes and showed their terrible claws.” This is repeated in the middle of the
book to show emphasis on the wild things that they are frightening and scary.
The theme is max struggling with good and evil. Max struggles emotionally
throughout the book. He lets his pride stop him from saying sorry for being a
bad boy and not controlling his anger. He enters the world of fantasy to escape
his true world of reality. The theme also deals with dark emotions that are very rare in children’s picture
books.
The
type of fantasy the story represents is Max who gives into his free rein into
his angry emotions. By the end of the story Max comes to a decision that he is
no longer angry and now he wants to go home. As brought out in the book on page
213, Max’s animal fantasy does contribute to human thought, and feelings. Max
sends the wild things off to bed without any supper; this is a mirror image of
himself because his mother sent him to bed without any supper. And just like he
told his mother he would eat her up, the wild things said they would eat Max up
when he was leaving them. The fantasy is in max’s mind and we go on a ride to
the wild things.
The media/ technique and style of art
featured in this book have been adapted many times, including an animated short
in 1973 ( an updated version in 1988); a 1980 opera; and a live-action 2009
feature film adaptation, directed by Spike Jonze. The book has sold over 20
million copies worldwide. Sendak’s style of art that he uses is Graphite and pencil
with varying softness and hardness by using lines that intersect. He uses tone
and shading by increasing the intersecting lines closer together. He uses
pastels and water crayons for blending. The combination of this media with the
lines, shapes, and color makes different textures throughout the book. He was
very adamant about make the eyes yellow to show anger and rage.
The one thing that I noticed in the
illustration that enhances the story was early in the book there was a picture Max that
he drew before he went on his adventure. Max had not yet been to the place
where the wild things are when he made this drawing, yet his drawing looks
exactly like one of the wild things he would later meet. Before Max’s journey, Max’s
real world in the book always contained by a white border on all four sides. As
his room transforms into the forest, that border slowly shrinks until it filled
the whole page. (The added black border represents the edge of the page.) The
world of Max’s imagination is larger, more wonderful, and less bounded than the
real world. Every page depicting the land of the wild things bleed to the edges
of the page; not one of them has a white border surrounding it on all four sides.
When Max returns to his room from his imaginative journey, though, the border
does not return I wondered why in his illustrations
did he do it and is there a meaning behind it? Another thing in the
illustrations was the wild things were big as the trees and yet they were
scared of max that is so little compared to them. In most of the illustration I
noticed the moon, from a full moon to a half moon back to a full moon maybe to
show the year, week and day he left in his fantasy. I looked up the moon tarot
card and what it said shocked me. I was wondering if he used the moon card as a
hidden theory behind his book, see if you see what I see? The moon mean a
disorientated person walking in is/her sleep. He/she looks around to find
him/herself in another land entirely. The creatures are from childhood
nightmares, and fantasies that peer from the shadows and eyes glowing. The moon
is always in control and everyone surrenders to its powers of the unconscious
hat will take him/her some ware. The fool gets into the boat and shoves off as
the waters sweep him away, moonbeams light the way. I really believe he used
tarot cards in his book. What do you think?
My personal response to this book is that this
book has many facets to it. It has Dark under tones dealing with a child’s
anger in many ways. This Freudian book speaks of a child’s Imagination,
survival, danger, boredom, fear, frustrations, anger and jealousy. First Max
has a wild imagination to escape his fear of loneliness and abandonment. He
invents this place where he is king. His mother chastised him and in return he
shows his frustrations by taking it out on the wild things. But, soon boredom creeps in and he is no
longer satisfied with the prospect of being the king any more. He wants out of his dream world and returns
to reality of a warm cozy room with a hot plate of food. The fallacy of the
book tells you that, “The Grass is not always greener on the other side.”
I also would use the book in my classroom
I would engage the children in dramatic play by listening to the story and
answering questions. I would also ask
them if they ever experienced what Max was going though. First, would engage
them in integrating vocabulary words through word puzzles and sentence
structure. Next, I would integrate Art by way of face masks. Finally I would
incorporate music, theater, dance, and visual art by way of the children
pretending to be a character in the book.
I feel this book is appropriate for K-6 classroom.
My main objectives would be to engage the
students in dramatic play by listening to the book/movie and answer the
questions that I prepared for them. Next, the children will participate in all
the activities such as: word Puzzles and face masks (cutting them out, coloring
and decorating them). They will incorporate acting, music and art through a
mini-play.
One of my goals is that children will
respond well to the book by responding to the questions and incorporating their
own real-life issues. The children will use their own imagination through play,
art, music and dance.
Cited
Book:
Whitman Galda, Lee, Bernice E. Cullinan,
and Lawrence R. Sipe. "Literature and the Child." , 7th Edition by Lee Galda, Bernice
E. Cullinan, Lawrence R. Sipe (9780495602392). Wadsworth, Cengage Learning,
n.d. &, 1998. Print.
Sendak, Maurice (1963, 1991), Where the Wild Things Are, New York, New
York: Harper Collins, Children’s Books.
Movie:
Jonze, Spike (03, 02, 2010), Where the Wild Things Are, Warner Bros,
Movie
Video:
Activities:
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