Where The Wild Things Are

Where The Wild Things Are

Author: Maurice Sendak

Illustrator: Maurice Sendak

Genre: Fantasy

Award: Caldecott Medal

Grade Level: Pre-K to 5^th grade

“let the rumpus start!”

The story begins with a young boy on his wolf costumes being mischievous (as they are) by nailing the nail on the wall and chasing the dog with a spatula. The mother has enough and calls him a “wild thing!” to which he replies, “I’ll eat you up”. Then the adventure begins. The boy imagines his room being solely taken over by trees then his room turns into a jungle where he ventures off to find the wild things. Instead of fearing the wild things, Max bravely cast a spell on them which makes them tame. They make him his king and then they begin to explore the forest doing wild things! Though Max is having fun, he feels lonely. So, he sets himself to go home leaving all the wild things behind!

This is a perfect picture storybook as there is a wonderful fusion of pictures and words. The story is one thing but the book design/style is what meticulously planned. The book cover has a wild thing sleeping (as if waiting for the reader to open the book and get on with the adventure). When you flip the page, there are two pages dedicated to the illustrations of the leaf collages (as if you are passing by all those leaves to get to get on board with the adventure). Then the title page and frontispiece welcomes you with wild things and Max playing with each other. The illustrations are amazing that everyone should really go WILD for. The wow factor is that the wild things really look like “wild things!” who is the mixture between animals and humans. It really does take quite an imagination to come up with the idea of creating such a beautiful illustration. Also, one thing to notice is as you flip the pages are that the illustration starts to take over. Then by the time you reach the end, the illustration starts to get smaller. A cool book to read!

Thoughts:

Love this book. I have always heard about this book but never got around to reading it.  This book is influential so I will use this book to encourage my students to let their imagination run wild and draw it out. I will then ask them to explain the drawing by using new vocabularies.  I know there is a movie about this book as well but I haven’t watched that either. Now that I have read the book, I don’t think I would want to watch the movie. (Books are always better than movies), The story is great. The illustrations are amazing. AND the book style is smart! They all work perfectly with each other which I am not surprised that this book won Caldecott medal.