RIP Maurice Sendak

“And Max, the king of all wild things, was lonely and wanted to be where someone loved him best of all.” 
― Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are
Today, the author of a beloved children's book has passed away, so today's post is about the book that he is best known for "Where the Wild Things Are". Maurice was an illustrator who decided to make an attempt at writing and illustrating a story, so he gave us "Where the Wild Things Are" published in 1963. Did you know according to Sendak, at first the book was banned in libraries and received negative reviews. It took about two years for librarians and teachers to realize that children were flocking to the book, checking it out over and over again. The story was originally supposed to be about a boy who, after a tantrum, is punished in his room and decides to escape to the place that gives the book its title, the "land of wild horses". Shortly before starting the illustrations, Sendak realized he did not know how to draw horses and, at the suggestion of his editor, changed the wild horses to the more ambiguous "Wild Things", (a term inspired by the Yiddish expression "Vilde chaya", used to indicate boisterous children). He replaced the horses with caricatures of his aunts and uncles, whom he had spent much time creating in his youth as an escape from their chaotic weekly visits to his family's Brooklyn home. Sendak gave the monsters the names of his relatives: Tzippy, Moishe, Aaron, Emile and Bernard. This story that Sendak wrote has the ability for children to relate to the character Max, which has created the opportunity for the story to remain a classic. This  book is "one of the very few picture books to make an entirely deliberate, and beautiful, use of the psychoanalytic story of anger". Mary Pols of Time magazine wrote that "what makes Sendak's book so compelling is its grounding effect: Max has a tantrum and in a flight of fancy visits his wild side, but he is pulled back by a belief in parental love to a supper 'still hot,' balancing the seesaw of fear and comfort." Thank you Maurice Sendak for giving us a classic to share throughout generations!