![]() ![]() I wrapped myself in my comforter and thought about the bang of mother death on Bambie. Found myself in my own room, my own animals lined up across the pillows of my bed. I looked up at him then at my mom beside me. As he dumped a ladle full of the reddish soup, he said, “That Bambi is damn delicious,” and the body of the deer fell into my bowl.ĭad chuckled and scratched his belly. When I was ten, sitting around the coffee table with my family, eating dinner and watching Flubber, Dad picked up my empty bowl to dish up a second serving. Like Mickey Mouse pancakes or lion’s toast. For years, I assumed the “deer” was just a funny name. When I was a kid, my dad served me deer chili. I’ve called it “rabbit stew.” They chewed the meat, but I’m not sure they understood. Twenty-something years of slamming into rabbits while driving down the Florida highways at night, watching them twitch in the grass at a state park, their long, yellowed teeth unpeeling when they yawn, finding their stretched bodies dead in the sand of a baseball field, chopping their skinned bodies into quarters, roasting them, and stirring them into stew. It looks comfortable there, and safe, but I’ve lived twenty-something years longer than my daughters. Bugs Bunny or the soft bunny Alice follows into Wonderland. To them, rabbits are still silly, magical creatures. When we arrive home, Lise piles her stuffed animals into a hill in the middle of her bedroom carpet. The cave itself can be wider, a small house, but still tight enough to touch your sides when you sleep. The tunnel should be as thin as possible, just enough space for your body to travel down. The patch must be mostly bald too many plants will reach deep, stubborn roots, like a web to dig through. “Burrows?” she asks, and I explain: Find a patch of dirt, hard and cool and near a tree to throw shade over your home. I tell her they’re real and everywhere, but, “Maybe they’re asleep in their burrows.” Lise asks me if there are even any rabbits in real life, at all. I tell my five-year-old daughter, Lise, to look for them while we walk, but we see only bugs and plants and the wide, bright sky. There must be rabbits here, and they must be hiding between blades of grass. 1.My daughters and I walk home from the park, crows warbling, bugs zipping, men spitting where they lay cement. There are seven life lessons from Where the Wild Things Are that even adults should pay attention to. In only 338 words, Sendak keenly observed human nature and imagination. But as Sendak intended, the themes in the book aren't just for children. ![]() And so he imagined a world around him, full of other wild things, where he reigned as king. 'Usually, something goes wrong.'įor Max, it's that he was angry, and he acted out, and his mom put him to bed without eating. In the NPR interview, he explained: 'Childhood is a tricky business,' Sendak says. ![]() Because of his own experiences, he doesn't see childhood through rose-colored glasses - and neither do his characters, like Where the Wild Things Are's Max. Growing up in Brooklyn to Polish immigrant parents, Sendak has said that his childhood was "terrible" due to family losses in the Holocaust. In a 2006 interview with NPR, Sendak explains that he puts his children characters in danger because "kids are so shrewd." Maurice Sendak has never been one to shy away from darker themes - which is often the reason his books have been banned. It's clear that Where The Wild Things Are has achieved massive cultural significance decades after its release, but more interesting is why. 1 on School Library Journal 's Top 100 Picture Books of all time. He is certainly best-known for his 1963 picture book Where the Wild Things Are, which, despite receiving some negative reviews and being frequently challenged by schools and libraries, was named second on the list of Teachers' Top 100 Books for Children in 2012 and No. June 10 marks the would-be 86th birthday of the late, beloved children's book author and illustrator Maurice Sendak. ![]()
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