ABSTRACT
I want to talk about a picture book which features very frequently in discussions of children’s literature, though I have no regrets about mentioning it yet again. It is Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak (1963). The book opens with Max, the hero of the story, dressed in his wolf suit, and ‘making mischief of one kind or another’. As a result, his mother calls him ‘WILD THING’ and sends him to his room without any supper. The reader is shown, rather than told, some of the kinds of mischief he got up to. This has the advantage of instantly involving the reader in the ‘onion peeling’ kinds of reading I referred to earlier. We have choices as readers: we can go on to find out what happened next; we can become involved in thinking about our reactions to what Max did that annoyed his mother so much; or we might want to think or talk about how we feel about his punishment.
