Where the Wild Things Are

Maurice Sendak

Maurice Sendak was an American writer and illustrator of children’s books who created his own works while also illustrating those of other authors, notably Else Holmelund Minarik’s Little Bear series. He treated childhood as a realm of unruly appetite, anger, fear, and melancholy, using fantasy to give private feelings a physical world. Where the Wild Things Are turns a domestic punishment into an expansive wilderness, while In the Night Kitchen follows the freer logic of dreams and Outside Over There brings anxiety and responsibility into a darker fairy-tale setting. Sendak’s methods were unusually varied. His pictures could shift from dense crosshatching reminiscent of nineteenth-century prints to airy watercolor and the broad, rounded forms of comics. His writing was often spare and rhythmic: Chicken Soup with Rice builds comic invention from repetition, and Pierre turns a child’s stubborn refrain into a compact cautionary fable. Across these works, danger and absurdity remain close to home, and children’s difficult emotions are taken seriously without losing playfulness.