Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
A Short History of the World’s Best Known Picture Book
Where the Wild Things Are is the world’s best known picture book. Published in 1963, it was created by American illustrator and writer, Maurice Sendak.
Where the Wild Things Are Movie
The 2009 film is just one in several adaptations of the book for other media. It has appeared as an animated short film and also an opera. The 2009 movie was directed by Spike Jonze. Sendak was one of the producers of the film, and handpicked Jonze as he felt he would stay most true to the spirit of the book.
Maurice Sendak
Sendak was born in Brooklyn, New York on June 10 1928. His parents were immigrants from Poland, and his father, Philip, also an exciting story teller, worked as a dressmaker. Philip’s tales were a great influence on Sendak when he began to write his own stories.
In 1940 Sendak watched the Disney film Fantasia and decided to become an illustrator. His first illustrations were published seven years later, when he was only 19, in a textbook called Atomics for the Millions by Dr. Maxwell Leigh Eidinoff.
For the first decade or so of his working life Sendak illustrated other people’s stories. But in the late fifties he began to write his own stories which he illustrated.
Award Winning Picture Books
Where the Wild Things Are won the Caldecott Medal in 1964. It also won the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award and was an American Library Association Notable Book. It has been in print continuously since it was published in 1963.
For the first two years it came under strong criticism from librarians and teachers who thought it would frighten children. However, as they saw that children, far from avoiding the book with its scary rampaging monsters, loved it and took it out from libraries again and again, the critics began to relax their view on it. Today Sendak is considered the greatest living picture book creator in the world.
Maurice Sendak Books
The best known of Sendak’s books are:
The Nutshell Library (1962)
Where the Wild Things Are (1963)
Higglety Pigglety Pop!, Or: There Must be More to Life (1967)
In the Night Kitchen (1970)
Outside Over There (1981)
Caldecott and Co: Notes on Books and Pictures (1990)
We Are All in the Dumps with Jack and Guy: Two Nursery Rhymes with Pictures (1993)
Mommy? (2006)
Best Writers for Children
In 1970 Sendak won the most important international award for an illustrator of children’s books, the Hans Christian Andersen Award.
Where the Wild Things Are is suitable for children aged 4 and upwards. It is published by Harpercollins, ISBN-13: 9780064431781
If you enjoyed this article on Where The Wild Things Are, you might enjoy reading about the inspiration behind The Great White Man Eating Shark by Margaret Mahy.
Where the Wild Things Are
|
More in Writing & Publishing
Latest Articles