When Max cries: "Let the wild rumpus start!" the pictures are drawn freely enough to let us imagine whatever rumpusing we need. It inspires a response that is, crucially, imaginative. At all of 38 pages and maybe 300 words, its alchemy comes from what it plants in the mind of a young reader. To my young mind, Max's escape to the island of the wild things wasn't merely truthful, it was revolutionary.īut the power of Where the Wild Things Are, as of any good picture book, lies in its suggestiveness. It's hard to think of another single text that so brilliantly captures the powerlessness of being very young, and of the ghoulishly liberating fantasies that result. Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak's fever dream of a picture book, has been beloved and revered since its publication in 1963.
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