Where The Wild Things Are: 60th Anniversary Edition - Softcover

Sendak, Maurice

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099408392 ISBN 13: 9780099408390

Publisher: Red Fox, 2000

Synopsis

One night Max puts on his wolf suit and makes mischief of one kind and another, so his mother calls him 'Wild Thing' and sends him to bed without his supper. That night a forest begins to grow in Max's room and an ocean rushes by with a boat to take Max to the place where the wild things are. Max tames the wild things and crowns himself as their king, and then the wild rumpus begins. But when Max has sent the monsters to bed, and everything is quiet, he starts to feel lonely and realises it is time to sail home to the place where someone loves him best of all.

About this title

Review:

Where the Wild Things Are is one of those truly rare books that can be enjoyed equally by a child and a grown-up. If you disagree, then it's been too long since you've attended a wild rumpus. Max dons his wolf suit in pursuit of some mischief and gets sent to bed without supper. Fortuitously, a forest grows in his room, allowing his wild rampage to continue unimpaired. Sendak's colour illustrations (perhaps his finest) are beautiful, and each turn of the page brings the discovery of a new wonder.

The wild things--with their mismatched parts and giant eyes--manage somehow to be scary-looking without ever really being scary; at times they're downright hilarious. Sendak's defiantly run-on sentences--one of his trademarks--lend the perfect touch of stream of consciousness to the tale, which floats between the land of dreams and a child's imagination.

This Sendak classic is more fun than you've ever had in a wolf's suit, giggle-stiflingly funny at times, and even manages to reaffirm the notion that there's no place like home.

Review:

"Sendak is the daddy of them all when it comes to picture books - the words, the rhythm and the design are all wonderful." (S Magazine, Sunday Express)

"The greatest picture book ever written" (Chris Riddell, Children's Laureate Guardian)

"The key to Sendak's success and to the continuing hipness of his book, is that it's hero is not a good child . . . the book is, in fact, extraordinarily childcentric, a book written for and about terrible infants, the kind of terrible infants that most children really are and that all adults remain for much of the time" (David Baddiel The Times)

"This is my never-fail picture book. The text is very short, but utterly perfect, the illustrations are tremendous" (Jacqueline Wilson)

"Gripping, ingenious and uplifting . . . a shrewd, fierce, healing book" (Boyd Tonkin Independent)

About this edition

• Publisher: Red Fox
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0099408392
• ISBN 13: 9780099408390
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 48
• Illustrator: Sendak Maurice