{"id":207,"date":"2014-08-03T00:01:16","date_gmt":"2014-08-03T05:01:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wildthings.blaine.org\/?p=207"},"modified":"2014-07-22T17:33:06","modified_gmt":"2014-07-22T22:33:06","slug":"where-the-wild-things-arent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wildthings.blaine.org\/?p=207","title":{"rendered":"Where the Wild Things Aren’t"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of children\u2019s literature\u2019s most famous child characters is Max of Where the Wild Things Are<\/em>. In a 2009 interview<\/a> at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast<\/em>, author-illustrator Chris Raschka notes its influences in a memorable and, we think, very fitting way:<\/p>\n

I recall the very first time I saw\u00a0<\/span>Where the Wild Things Are<\/strong><\/a><\/em>: It was on my friend Keith\u2019s kitchen table; there was, right away, something mysterious and nearly exotic about the book.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yep, mysterious and exotic. That pretty much nails it.<\/p>\n

\"Where_The_Wild_Things_Are_(book)_cover\"<\/a>Max isn\u2019t based on any real-world counterpart, but fans of this book may be surprised to know the story-that-never-was behind the book. In 1955, Sendak created a picture book dummy titled \u201cWhere the Wild Horses Are\u201d with a plot that went like this:<\/p>\n

A young boy sees a sign pointing toward \u201cTo Where the Wild Horses Are.\u201d He starts to run in the direction the sign is pointing, only to see another sign telling him to \u201cGo Slow.\u201d That is followed by \u201cDon\u2019t Let Them See You\u201d and \u201cHide Your Eyes.\u201d Once he finds the wild horses, he grabs onto the tail of one, is thrown about and through the air, and loses his clothes. Now completely naked, he passes a sign that says \u201cBeware!\u201d and is then chased by what appears to be a wolf, a monster, and a bird. He dives into a nearby body of water and sails away on a boat to Happy Island, and it is there he finds a young bride waiting for him in a house.<\/p>\n

(Missing from this bizarre tale is the emotional motivation Max has in the book\u2019s final version \u2013 his rage at his mother and desire to simply get away already<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

As Sendak continued to fine-tune the tale in 1963, there even emerged—\u00e0 la Neil Gaiman\u2019s Coraline<\/em> and her other mother—an alternate mother of sorts as the boy of \u201cWhere the Wild Horses Are\u201d enters a magic garden that emerges from his forest-room. \u201cSomeone appeared and said stay with me, I am your mother,\u201d Sendak had written.<\/p>\n

That cannot be, said the boy, you do not look like my mother, and besides my mother is home waiting for me. With a growl the make-believe mother turned into a terrible wolf and chased the boy out of the magic garden\u2026In a moment the boy grew to an old man and frightened the wolf away\u2026.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As Selma G. Lanes has pointed out, the notion of a mother turning into a wolf is nightmare-inducing, indeed, but it certainly does explain Max\u2019s wolf costume.<\/p>\n

The completed manuscript Sendak had turned into Harper included three verses that are so radically different from the final version we now hold in our hands that it is a wonder, particularly for die-hard fans of the classic picture book. After Max smells \u201cgood things to eat\u201d and leaves the wild things, Sendak had written:<\/p>\n

But Max didn\u2019t care because the Wild Things<\/em><\/p>\n

never loved him best of all —\u00a0 or let him<\/em><\/p>\n

eat from grown-up plates<\/em><\/p>\n

or showed him how to call long distance.<\/em><\/p>\n

So Max gave up being King of Where the Wild Things Are.<\/em><\/p>\n

‘Wild Things are child things,’<\/em><\/p>\n

said Max as he steered his boat<\/em><\/p>\n

back over the year and in and<\/em><\/p>\n

out of weeks and through the day.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As Selma G. Lanes noted, all verses \u201csuffer from over-specificity, the spelling out of mundane details in a heavy-handed way,\u201d not to mention the line \u201cWild Things are child things\u201d was too haughty and altogether out of character for Max.<\/p>\n

The version readers see today is what some would call perfect. Many\u00a0illustration lovers the world over would even admit to the beauty of the final page, free of art (and Jules’ favorite page in all of picture book-dom), what Gregory Maguire has called “one of Sendak\u2019s most lovingly rendered pages, one of his most graphically succinct and nonetheless articulate expressions of deep meaning”:<\/p>\n

\"stillhotfinal\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Sources<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lanes, Selma G. The Art of Maurice Sendak<\/em>. New York: Abradale Press\/Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1980.<\/p>\n

Maguire, Gregory. “A Sendak Appreciation.” The Horn Book<\/em>, November\/December 2003.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of children\u2019s literature\u2019s most famous child characters is Max of Where the Wild Things Are. In a 2009 interview at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, author-illustrator Chris Raschka notes its influences in a memorable and, we think, very fitting way: I recall the very first time I saw\u00a0Where the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":796,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wildthings.blaine.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wildthings.blaine.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wildthings.blaine.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wildthings.blaine.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wildthings.blaine.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=207"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/wildthings.blaine.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":967,"href":"http:\/\/wildthings.blaine.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207\/revisions\/967"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wildthings.blaine.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wildthings.blaine.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wildthings.blaine.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wildthings.blaine.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}