Where the Wild Things Are

If you never read this book as a child, there’s probably a pretty big chunk of lego blocks missing from the foundation of your youth’s culture. Briefly, the story is about a young boy named Max who is sent up to his room without supper after being very mischievous. The anger raging inside of him is immense: his mother called him a wild thing. Suddenly his bedroom morphs into a forest and an ocean where he finds a little boat waiting for him. He then sails to the land where the wild things are. My story telling ends here, it’s up to you to find out the rest if you don’t already know it.

At the time of its publication, in 1963, finding a children’s book that treated dark emotions such as anger wasn’t very frequent. I guess you could say it was a little avant-garde. Luckily for those who never did read it, the live-action movie adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s picture book is set to be released on October 16th, 2009 and to add icing on the cake: it is directed by film genius Spike Jonze. You can view the trailer
here; needless to say my expectations for this movie are extremely high. However, the book is really worth a read even with the movie coming out, the illustrations themselves, also by Sendak, are key players in what has become a true classic.