Where the Wild Things Are
A teacher’s look at why this book belongs in the The Why-Askers stage.
Why it fits The Why-Askers (for preschoolers whose every page sparks a question)
Max sails to where the wild things are, rules them, and comes home to warm supper. It honors big feelings and imagination in the same breath. The wild rumpus never gets old.
What makes it special
Sendak let a child's anger sail somewhere magnificent and come home loved anyway — a psychological honesty that changed picture books. The wild rumpus spreads, wordless and thundering, still teach illustrators what a page can do. Max returns to supper still hot: rage, adventure, and unconditional love in ten minutes flat.
From the publisher
This is an inspired children's book about a boy's passage through tempestuous aspects of life. Max, a naughty little boy, sent to bed without his supper, sails to the land of the wild things, where he becomes their…
About Maurice Sendak
Maurice Sendak (1928–2012) was born in Brooklyn to Jewish immigrant parents from Poland and illustrated over one hundred books across a sixty-year career. He won the 1964 Caldecott Medal for Where the Wild Things Are, the 1970 Hans Christian Andersen Award and the 1983 Laura Ingalls Wilder Award.
As a child he had health problems that kept him confined to bed, and he later said his childhood was marked by the deaths of members of his extended family in the Holocaust, which introduced him early to the idea of mortality.
Also by this author: In the Night Kitchen · Outside Over There · The Nutshell Library
More from “What If and Why Not”
This book is part of The Best Books for Preschoolers: 30 Teacher Picks (The Why-Askers) in our guide The Best Children’s Books by Age — 120 books chosen by the Montessori-certified teachers at Creative Minds Montessori in Frisco, TX. Come see how we build readers →
Nobody paid for this review — not the author, not the publisher — and the store link above earns us nothing. Our only interest is the reader this book fits.