Beatrix Potter, Maurice Sendak and Russell Hoban handout My favorite illustrator when I was a young man, just learning, was Randolph Caldecott [The House That Jack Built; Hey Diddle Diddle; The Grand Panjandrum Himself], and he must be placed in the Canon. I've learned and learned from him and although I've grown up and I've gotten old I still wonder at the freshness and honesty and delicacy of his work, and the fact that his picture books are largely ignored, and that an award is named after him [the Caldecott Medal for children's book illustration], but that most people don't know anything about him and don't read him. He's like Mozart--the way he will take a few lines and embellish those lines in personal ways and musical ways. One of the most gorgeous picture book-makers ever, perhaps the most gorgeous, is Randolph Caldecott. Another writer I'd put in my Canon is Beatrix Potter, who is to me the mini-Jane Austen. Jane Austen is is one of my very favorite writers. I re-read her all the time and I get the same pleasure. She's perfect--and I couldn't tell you why. She just makes me so happy. Beatrix Potter is a miniaturist in the same way that Austen is. Austen once described her work as "that little bit (two inches wide) of ivory,in which I work with so fine a brush as produces little effect after much labor." She wasn't being coy or modest; she had measured her talent, and she knew exactly what she could do. What a perfect two inches of ivory! In the same way, Potter always works within her experience. She showed us something we have all profited from. I mean those of us who have learned the lesson, which is: There is no such thing as a children's book, no such thing as a sweet, little book for kiddies. And unfortunately, ironically, she's been forced into that image with Peter Rabbit and the Flopsy Bunnies, but her books in truth are sturdy and strange. I mean Peter Rabbit is lethal--look what almost happens to him. He gets away not because he's smart, but just by dumb luck. And the book makes it clear that it's just dumb luck that has saved him from being eaten. But your mother is still there to forgive you. It's one of the models for Max in Where the Wild Things Are. The honesty of the child--he's warned against the danger but he can't resist it. And Peter almost dies. I would include all of Potter's books in the Canon. Maurice Sendak From Beatrix Potter: writing in code By M. Daphne Kutzer The Tailor of Gloucester Both Potters favourite book and her most unusual. Several characteristics make it different from her other works: While a few of Poters books have human figures (like Mr. McGregor in Peter Rabbit), in none of them is the human a sympathetic protagonist. The T of G is also the only urban novel Potter ever wrote. Humphrey Carpenter notes that Potter is a subversive writer who is definitely on the side of the transgressor in her books, and also notes that the T of G was a crucially important book for Potter, a linguistic exercise, a study in establishing what she believed to be her grandmothers voice. Kutzer says, Potters entire oeuvre is an extended complaint of repression and argument for expression of self, and her linguistic style is only a part of that rebellion. The T of G is imp not only because it helped Potter develop a distinctive prose style separating her from her own historical moment, but because it allowed her to banish both Victorian prose and parental authority: in fact to excise her father, mother, and even her brother Bertram and t go back to a period her beloved and rebellious grandmother Jessy Crompton would have known well. T of G encoded palimpsest of complaints against hierarchy, authority and power. T of G specifically set in a pre-Victorian period in the time of swords and periwigs...lappets. Details of clothing, crockery and language specify (for the adult if not the child reader) that the story takes place somewhere during the Regency period (probably between 1785 and 1800) Revolutionary import, strong social commentary, imagery of food and kitchen in manuscript, also use of the expression unfranchize the mice from under the teacup. Working class tailor is in the same position as the mice in relation to the Mayor of Gloucester etc. Intertextuality: Shoemaker and the elves (only resemblance to this fairy tale is in the plot, but the mice are more naturally involved in the fate of the tailor) and Perraults tale Puss in Boots (cat dos not help impoverished master but makes things difficult for him). [There is also a deliberate allusion to the story of Dick Whittington and his cat (although the reference is to the bells that rung to call him back to a sudden change of fortune), but all these suggestions reinforce the idea that the cat is not anaturally loyal or devoted friend to its master. CN]

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From the Beatrix Potter website The Tailor of Gloucester When gentlemen wore ruffles and gold-lace waistcoats Many of Beatrix Potters stories begin Once upon a time. The Tailor of Gloucester is unusual in that the story takes place at a specific period the time of swords and periwigs between about 1735 and 1785. Beatrix went to extraordinary lengths to create an authentic setting. Passing a tailors shop in Chelsea one day, she deliberately tore a button off her coat and took it in to be mended so she could observe at first hand the tailors posture, tools and workbench. Beatrix sought inspiration for the Mayor of Gloucesters coat and embroidered waistcoat in the 18th-century clothes owned by her local museum, the V&A. She wrote to her publisher, Norman Warne: 'I have been delighted to find I may draw some most beautiful 18th century clothes at the South Kensington Museum. I had been looking at them for a long time in an inconvenient dark corner of the Goldsmiths Court, but had no idea they could be taken out of the case. The clerk says I could have any article put on a table in one of the offices, which will be most convenient. (Letter to Norman Warne, 27th March 1903). Her sketches are so accurate that it is possible to identify the original garments, including the mayors waistcoat, worked with poppies and corn-flowers, in the V&As collections. In May 1903 Beatrix made many sketches of Gloucester whilst visiting friends in nearby Stroud. The street scenes in her story, particularly that of the tailors shop in College Court, depict actual places in the city. Her frontispiece is an exception. Here, Beatrix based her illustration on a London street scene by William Hogarth (16971764). She used the painting to establish the period setting of her story, even picking out details of the gentlemans attire (swords and periwigs and full-skirted coats) in her opening sentence. Hogarths original painting, Noon of 1736, is at Grimsthorpe Castle in Lincolnshire and Beatrix is unlikely to have seen it. Instead, she may have come across the engraved print on one of her many visits to the Art Reading Room at the V&A. A Dark Sense of Humour Graham Greene, whose own writing was influenced by his appreciation of the work of Beatrix Potter, described Potter as 'an acute and unromantic observer, who never sacrifices truth for an effective gesture'. From childhood, Potter both observed and dissected animals in order to discover their precise physiognomy and anatomy. Her early passion for scientific investigation became integral to her method as an illustrator. Unlike many of her contemporaries, Potter never resorted to caricature or the grotesque - her first concern was always to remain faithful to the true likeness of the animals. Potter's humour, both subtle and sophisticated, is based on the familiar, domestic happenings of everyday life, such as baking, shopping and spring-cleaning. Yet there is often a sinister undercurrent to her composed and elegant prose. Her treatment of violence and death is often surprisingly blunt - Potter is rarely concerned with morality. Hours spent observing the way nature operates meant she was a realist: she knew animals kill other animals, that life was full of strong instincts and potential threat. It was this attitude that allowed her to create wry and slightly detached stories about a world where cats long to eat mice, rats terrorise kittens, rabbits can end up in pies, and foxes set traps with buckets of water. From 'WONDER AND MATTER-OF-FACT MEET' THE IMAGINATION OF BEATRIX POTTER By Marcia Rackow In her stories, illustrations, and her scientific studies, Beatrix Potter wanted "to make reality and wonder akin, the fact and strangeness like each other." For example, on the jacket of her favorite book, The Tailor of Gloucester, is a picture of a mouse, wearing black wire spectacles, sitting on a red spool of thread reading a newspaper, The Tailor and Cutter. It is charming, funny, fantastic, yet entirely sensible. There is an exactitude of observation and factuality about this drawing that makes the surprising, the strange, believable. The mouse is beautifully rendered, and though he is sitting up comfortably like a person with his feet crossed, and his hands though we know they are his front paws are stretched out holding a newspaper, we can see how carefully Beatrix Potter observed mice. And so importantly, with all the sweetness and charm she never leaves out the terrifying. Notice how the mouse's pink tail curves over the fierce and menacing blades of the scissors before it comes to a rest near the spool. And there is a sense of the domestic, the near, and at the same time, the world as wide, having wonder as the mouse sits near those scissors and thimble in that transparent blue space.

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Beatrix Potter wrote many letters to the children of her friends and relatives, one of which, written in 1902 to a little boy who was ill, Noel Moore, was to become a classic of children's literature. I think The Tale of Peter Rabbit, translated into many languages, has affected children so much because it is against a child's dividing the world as wonder from the world as fact. Margaret Lane writes: All her...animals are conceived with imaginative truth, and though they are shrewdly humanized, and their stories told throughout in human terms, there is, imaginatively speaking, not a word of falsehood. We close the books knowing more about animal and human nature than we did before. The book opens with a picture of a family of rabbits Flopsy, Mopsy, Cotton-tail, Peter, and their mother where they live in the "root of a very big fir tree." The drawing is factual, yet the delicate pink and lavender trees in the distance seem to go into unknown space. And there is strangeness, too, in the fact that these rabbits have names and are in a domestic situation. So, on the next page, when we see the rabbits standing up like children with their capes on, it seems perfectly natural, and we accept the strange as fact. Mrs. Rabbit tells her children they can go into the field, ...but don't go into Mr. McGregor's garden: your Father had an accident there; he was put in a pie by Mrs. McGregor. Here, the terror of what happened in Mr. McGregor's garden is presented matter-of-factly, along with the goodness of the fields and the sweetness of the drawing. Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cotton-tail went down the lane, But Peter, who was very naughty, ran straight away to Mr. McGregor's garden, and squeezed under the gate! Did Beatrix Potter want to show that a world which can be terrifying and cause pain, can also please us, and is still a world to be known and liked? There is humor in this picture as Beatrix Potter captures the awkwardness of Peter, looking out at the garden with wonder. Peter is pleased by what he finds in the garden. We see him enjoying some radishes. But soon he comes face to face with Mr. McGregor who runs after him with a rake. Peter, after losing "one of his shoes among the cabbages," gets caught in a gooseberry net "by the large buttons on his jacket," and after many narrow escapes, "climbed upon a wheelbarrow and peeped over." We see an ordinary rabbit, with that combination of curiosity and timidity rabbits have. And Peter looks out on a world that is both fearful: there is Mr. McGregor, and hopeful "and beyond him was the gate!" In this drawing, the relation of the precisely drawn vegetable leaves and vines, and Peter's furry coat in the foreground, near us, and the background that gradually dissolves into the pale mist of the forest beyond, is lovely. One of the things I care for in Beatrix Potter's work is the way the distant, unseen world is present in the immediate, factual world we see before us. Though the book is very small, there is a sense of space. Beatrix Potter carefully and beautifully places the picture in that white space that both fixes the image and also allows it to float freely as the soft, blurred edges blend into the white. Her use of the precise outlines and the soft, transparent washes of watercolor also puts together the contained and the expansive, fact and wonder. From Childrens literature By Peter Hunt Peter Hollindale summarized one aspect of her appeal: She moves with ease...between the biological reality of the animal and the social behaviour of the human. By taking her seriously as both a naturalist and a satirist, and reading the books as conversations through the medium of fantasy between these two selves, these two B Ps, we can appreciate the originality of her achievements. Potter demonstrates the blend of precise language and hard-headed, unsentimental pragmatism that characterizes some of the most effective childrens writers (but not, unfortunately all of Potters adapters). Brought up in a repressive atmosphere, keeping an extensive journal in code for many years, P became a highly proficient natural history artist. The Tale of Peter Rabbit originated in a picture letter and went through several detailed revisions and a privately printed edition (1900) before the publication by Warne in 1902. From then on Potter kept firm control of the design and marketing of her little books which were designed quite deliberately and consciously for small hands. The fine water-colour illustrations (which were re-reproduced from 1987) are accompanied by deceptively complex texts. Almost all the tales of naughty children, such as Peter Rabbit, Squirrel Nutkin and Benjamin Bunny, have dark undertones. Others are sharp social comedy (such as The Pie and the Patty-Pan) or nightmares with disreputable characers ( such as The Roly Poly Pudding) and The Tale of Mr. Tod. Not only can the vocabulary be sophisticated, but Potter constantly treats her audience with great respect, making extensive use of two devices which conventional wisdom holds to be outside the range of small children elision and irony. A classic example is the Tale of Jemima puddle- Duck, in which Jemima meets the fox: She was startled to find an elegantly dressed gentleman...whiskers. ...Jemima thought him mighty civil and handsome.

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Almost every text makes assumptions of understanding and highly skilled use is made, for example, of the page turn as a significant gap. Peters expedition of Mr. McGregors garden reads thus: First he ate some lettuces and some French beans; and then he ate some radishes. (Page turn) And then, feeling rather sick, he went to look for some parsley. The gaps here might not seem obvious, but they might be compared with the revised text by David Hately for the 1987 Ladybird edition (based on the original and authorized story) which assumes a much less astute readership: There were lots of vegetables in Mr. Mc.Gregors garden. Peter Rabbit loved vegetables. He began to eat them. First he tried the lettuces. Next he tried the beans. Thenhe ate some radishes. (Page turn) Peter ate too much, because he was greedy. He began to feel sick. I must find some parsley to nibble, he said to himself. That will make me feel better. The implications of such adaptations, and a very early version by Canon Rawnsley And rabbits like children/ who run very quick/After eating too largely/are sure to feel sick have been discussed by Brian Alderson. He suggests that Potter would have had no truck with the reductive procedure of educationalists who regard the child as the measure of childrens literature and that it is the duty of those who publish for him to make his straight his pathway o literacy and, presumably, morality. After her marriage in 1913, Potter (now, very emphatically Mrs. Heelis) virtually gave up writing and became a successful farmer and breeder of sheep... It would be a mistake, as john Goldthwaite has pointed out, to suppose that Potter was free of sentimentalism or whimsy. He cites Benjamin Bunny as less a book addressed to children than a book about children, illegitimately addressed to adults with a taste for the sweet and sentimental. But it is the Potter of The Tale of Mr. Todd and Peter Rabbit, that stoical naturalist who cuts against the popular grain: dry-eyed, earthwise, a little uncanny who counts in the end. Perhaps one of the key paradoxes of Potter is her blend of apparent simplicity and a deep seated subversion. Humphrey Carpenter sees Peter Rabbit as a parody...The leg of the moral tale is being gently, but definitely pulled; the morals of her stories, if they exist, are very ambiguous. As Hollindale observes: Post-fabulist can be a helpful term for Potter. She recognizes Aesop... but he is truly in the shadows, while she is an imaginative artist in the daylight of a scientific age. This means that Potter the moralist is a slippery customer. She is, in fact, a slippery customer on many levels, and her subtlety and intelligence far outweigh that of her many impersonators and adapters. A comparison between the original version and the highly controversial adaptation (illustrated with photographs of stuffed animals) by David Hately...reveals more than changes in assumptions about child readers. The new version speaks volumes about the changes in the relationship between parents and children, of the image of the parent (as old or not), of childrens supposed responses to death, and the general freedom of children in the world. First, Potters four rabbits lived with their mother...Mrs. McGregor. Second, Hately in a world that is at once less benign and more protecive: They lived in a burrow under the root of a big tree. One day they were allowed to play outside. Stay near home, said their mother. Please dont go to Mr. McGregors garden. Why not? asked Peter. Because he doesnt like rabbits, answered Mrs. Rabbit. He will try to catch you. BP, one feels, would have enjoyed the ironies, esp. the irony that she has come to stand as an exemplar of many of the critical and sociological difficulties surrounding childrens literature. From How picturebooks work By Maria Nikolajeva, Carole Scott Consonant, symmetrical, complementary In Potters case we see an extraordinary balance in complementarity between remarkable pictures and unique prose style. This provides a number of avenues of expression that rarely overlap, but rather work together to strengthen the ultimate effect. An illustration of this is the second picture of Peter Rabbit which offers complementary expression of both transformation and prediction. The pictures of the rabbits illustrates a metamorphosis from the first pages depiction of ordinary wild creatures on all fours to characters with human attributes; they are standing up and wearing clothes, and distinctive clothes at that. This instinctive humanization is reinforced by the text on the opposite page, where Mrs Rabbit is talking to her children, addressing them with endearment and giving them a little family history. In addition, in a combination of backshadowing and foreshadowing, while the text refers backward in time to Mr. Rabbits accident, the picture is alerting us to the future: the girls are clustering around and paying attention to their mother, but Peter stands apart with her back to her. The combination

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of text and image communicates to the reader a sense of imminent peril, the meeting of a dangerous situation (the text) with the refusal to be guided by past experience (picture). Beatrix Potters Tale of Peter Rabbit provides an excellent example to begin this examination. If we look at the opening doublespread (pictures on the left, words on the right), there are some apparent contradictions (some devices to keep the reader alert and involved.) The picture is quite simple and straightforward, and he reader is drawn directly into it since mother rabbit looks us right in the eye. But the text tells us there are four little rabbits and the picture shows only three. Knowing there is one creator encourages us to look more closely and ask whether the hind legs and tail on the left belong to a rabbit whose head is underneath the tree root rather than to the rabbit which appears on the other side of the root. With greater discrimination it becomes increasingly apparent that the body of the rabbit wd have to be rather long...B Ps drawings are so anatomically correct that it is the safe to conclude that the tail must belong to the fourth rabbit. This little puzzle immediately sets up a tension between picture and text, because we want to figure out how to resolve this discrepancy. We know that this apparent discrepancy is intended. When we read the book next time we know that it is probably Peter who is checking out his surroundings underground instead of taking his cue from what his mother is looking at. Another device is in the text. Unlike the usual left to right motion, the names of the rabbits are listed in a standard line that leans, like a backlash, from right to left, bringing the eye toward the picture and the puzzle of the four names and the three rabbits. The text and the picture are thus interrelated in several ways: I the apparent discrepancy between the information that is imagistically (iconically) and verbally (symbolically) presented; in the impact on eye movement that plots a back and forth pattern between text and picture pages, reinforced by the line of names that point to the picture; and in the interpretive questions provoked by the behaviour of the rabbit whose head is hidden from the reader questions that introduce the subversive message of the books (motives for behaviour may be hidden, subversive, antiauthoritarian, and exciting and adventurous.) From A Multimodal Analysis of The Tale of Peter Rabbit within the Interpersonal Metafunction. By A. Jess Moya Guijarro The tale was intended for children of the English middle class in the Victorian era, characterized by strict and conservative manners in court and in childrens education. In line with the moralising literature addressed to children that Potter was familiar with, the author, who also doubles as illustrator, no doubt followed the ideological requirements of the Victorian period. And, indeed, some moralistic values predominate in the verbal narrative: the good little bunnies, as Potter calls them, are rewarded at the end of the tale with a nice supper while Peter, after disobeying his mother, ends up with a stomach-ache. Notwithstanding her decision to punish Peter for his disobedience, Potter, as Scott (2001) states, seems to be on the side of the transgressor: Although Peter disobeys his mother and causes her anxiety and grief, commits trespass and theft, and evades paternalistic authority symbolized by Mr. McGregor , nonetheless he escapes all punishment for his misdeeds, except for a temporary stomach-ache resulting from his greediness. (2001: 20) The tale seems to be more than a story in which a character has found himself in a risky situation by disobeying his mothers advice. As has been observed in the critical literature, Potters voice seems to be that of a rebel in defence of liberty and natural instinct (Scott 2001: 29; Carpenter 1989: 279). This ambiguity around Potters stance towards the protagonist is a constant in the story, and I propose that this will probably determine the semiotic choices made by the writer-illustrator to create interpersonal meanings in both the verbal and visual modes. ... Another factor to be considered in the visual mode is that of character focalization, which analyzes the eyes through which the narrative world is seen. The reader/viewer can contemplate the actions or thoughts of the characters that make up the narration vicariously through the point of view of a character, be it main or secondary, and not through his own eyes (Moebius 1986; Painter 2007). In childrens stories, this is achieved, Painter affirms (2007: 44-45), through the utilization of distinct techniques which can be applied either to images juxtaposed in two scenes (across frames) or in one picture (within a frame). Sometimes, the utilization of only one image offers the possibility of simultaneously having a readers perspective and a character focalization. This technique is known as, viewing along with the focalizing character (Painter 2007: 47-48). In it, the reader is usually positioned behind the character and sees what is happening within the narrated world through both his own eyes and the characters eyes. Double spread 11, when Peter meets Mr McGregor for the first time in his garden after having had a feast of vegetables, provides a good example, as we also see the farmer from Peters viewpoint, and at the same time, the protagonist has his back toward the observer. Peter manages to escape from the garden and finds the way back home. In this double spread, Peter is almost under the gate, but not quite; he is just about to slip underneath it. This establishes a rhythmic pattern between words and pictures, since the action shown by the pictures comes at some point before the completion of the action described by the declarative clauses

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used in the text. In this way, we read the text in some anticipation and the illustration delays the events, therefore increasing the narrative tension. As Nodelman (1988: 258) affirms, almost every picture in this tale shows a moment towards the end of the actions implied by the text, but not necessarily the very end. This aspect will be referred to again in the analysis of the illustrations. Out of the 94 declarative clauses identified, 4 act, at the discourse level, as exclamations. Indicated as such by an exclamation mark, they are signals to adults reading aloud to children that Potter is highlighting key passages in the narrative plot that make the story progress. In double spread 8, for example, through an exclamation And squeezed under the gate! the conflict starts. Peter disobeys his mothers instructions and begins his adventure in the McGregors private garden, where his father had lost his life upon becoming trapped by the farmer. After enjoying the feast of vegetables, the inevitable happens: the protagonist and the aggressor cross paths, an event that Potter expresses through the only interrogative structure identified in the tale: But round the end of a cucumber frame, whom should he meet but Mr. McGregor! (double spread 11). In fact, rather than a regular interrogative, this idiomatic structure containing a wh-element, should and but is used to express surprise and is signalled as an exclamation by means of punctuation. Again, Potter uses the mood structures punctuation to achieve special effects at the discourse-semantic level. There is another exclamation worthy of mention which refers to Peters loss of garments: It was the second little jacket and pair of shoes that Peter had lost in a fortnight! (double spread 30). At first glance, this event does not seem to be relevant to the development of the narrative plot; rather, it is an anecdote within the deeds that the protagonist has had to overcome in order to return home safe and sound. However, the author gives this act some special importance by using an exclamation mark. Perhaps this is due to the fact that Peters garments are a metaphor of the social repression of natural impulses. For Potter, clothing is synonymous with imprisonment and hostility to freedom (Scott 1994: 79). Notice that in Potters time, the Victorian Period, women wore corsets, which were very uncomfortable and even resulted in fainting at times. Women wore them, however, because if not, it created social disapproval. Peter seems to be torn between his rabbitlike nature and his child-like behaviour. His entrance into the garden, which is private property, also involves the loss of his clothing. By using clothing as a motive, Potter creates the dilemma of whether Peter should act like a child, as his mother wishes, following the civilized codes of behaviour, or naturally, like an animal, following his animal instincts (Scott 1994). Only four commands, realized through imperative clauses, have been found in double spreads 2, 4 and 12, which reach the rate of 4% of the tokens identified. They are of special interest to us here, as they create an interactive relationship between the main character, Peter, and his mother, and between him and Mr McGregor: but dont go into Mr. McGregors garden, Now run along, and dont get into mischief, stop thief! These commands are not usually heeded by the protagonist. Peter trespasses in the garden, not because he needs food to survive, since that is provided by his mother, but rather for the pure joy of breaking established rules (Scott 2001). Thus, so far, it seems that the narrative voice reflects the events from an objective and distant perspective, as suggested by the sparse use of imperative and interrogative clauses and the high presence of declarative mood structures. The attitudes and judgments embodied in the text, realised by the system of modal assessment and by choice of lexis, are also part of the interpersonal metafunction of language (Halliday 2004: table 10 [6]). Attitudinal lexis within nominal group and copular structures is also used by Potter to express evaluative meaning and to establish a boundary between the protagonists and his sisters behaviour. Within a lexico-grammatical framework, Peters sisters are described as good little rabbits while Peter is typically associated with the qualities naughty and frightened. Concerning modality, in the second double spread the modal verb may expresses permission given by the person in authority, Mrs Rabbit: you may go into the fields or down the lane, after which a prohibition is introduced, which restricts the protagonists freedom. In the 23th double spread the modal verb could refers to the mouses lack of ability to give information about the location of the gate that leads to the exit of the McGregors property ( but she [an old mouse] had such a large pea in her mouth that she could not answer). The most relevant expressions from a modal perspective are found in double spread 15: After losing them (his clothes), he ran on four legs and went faster, so that I think he might have got away altogether if he had not unfortunately run into a gooseberry net, and got caught by the large buttons on his jacket. It was a blue jacket with brass buttons, quite new. (2002: 13) The interpersonal metaphor I think, the modal verb might, expressing factual possibility, and essentially the modal adjunct unfortunately, show Potters stance in favour of Peter. The fact that the little rabbit runs into a gooseberry net where he was trapped is described by the writer as unfortunate. In this specific case, Potter seems to support the flight of the protagonist, placing the reader of the tale on his side. Following this line, the author leads the reader to identify with the defenceless rabbit and to wish for his escape from his oppressor. This clearly seems to be in opposition of the Victorian philosophy where children were supposed to be punished if they did not follow the rules imposed by their elders. Mackey (1998) and Scott (2001) support this and state that the tone used by Potter to describe the protagonists disobedience raises the question of whether she is on the side of conventionalism or on the side of freedom and natural instinct. Two demand images have been identified in double spreads 1 and 21, fulfilling two narrative purposes respectively: (i) introduce the characters to the reader, and (ii) encourage our empathy with the main character. In the first place, inserted here

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as figure 1, the rabbits are located near the tree trunk where they live. Mrs Rabbit, the mother of the litter, directs her gaze directly at the viewer, inviting him into the story and introducing her children as the verbiage also does through a thereconstruction: ONCE UPON A TIME there were four little Rabbits, and their names were Flopsy, Mopsy, Cotton-tail and Peter. In this scene, although both the verbiage and the illustration are essential to the creation of the story, the illustration conveys more relevant information about Peters personality than do the words. Peter is represented through a visual metonymy (Forceville 2009), one part (his tail) for his whole, attracting the readers attention in a special way. The picture, which is a long-shot and has frontal and eye-level angles, clearly reflects that Flopsy, Mopsy and Cotton-tail do not share the same personality as the main character. While his sisters show their heads to the reader, Peter is playing in the burrow and only his backside can be seen. He is absorbed in his own world and reveals a different attitude. Without the help of the verbiage, we possibly would not know that there are four rabbits in the story, as only the heads of three little rabbits are being depicted.4 The second demand image is identified in double spread 21. Peter looks directly at the recipient of the story looking for support and demonstrating a certain sadness in his eyes at having left the watering can in which he hid to escape from Mr McGregor. In picture books this type of reaction image is not common as their use usually interrupts the development of the narrative plot. The text that accompanies it essentially describes the state in which the protagonist finds himself, without contributing to the plot development. This demand image achieves a strong engagement between Peter and the child, and forges the identification of the latter with the hero of the story. 4 Note that in the verbal component the names of the four little rabbits are displaced towards the left from Flopsy to Peter, so that the viewer can easily identify Peter with the rabbit whose rear end is seen in the illustration, represented through a metonymy. With regard to the second feature of interactive meaning, social distance and intimacy, long shots predominate as characters are shown full-length and surrounded by a setting, although they are not necessarily located in the far distance. The 21 longshots identified tend to show characters against the background in which the actions are carried out, generally within the natural exterior settings of the protagonists (see figure 1). Some of the long-shots, however, reflect interior settings: the toolshed where Peter tries to hide after his first encounter with the farmer or even the Rabbit familys house in the final three illustrations where kitchen utensils, the main characters bed and food can be seen. The exterior settings, as Scott (2001) states, usually provide a high degree of contextual detail as evidenced in double spreads 26 and 27, where Peter is looking from the wheelbarrow towards the gate and later escaping from Mr McGregor; these two illustrations offer long-shots with the main character, Peter, in the foreground. From Picturebooks as Aesthetic Objects By Lawrence R. Sipe In Where the Wild Things Are, on the other hand, Sendak reserves the full-bleed double spread format for the middle (and climax) of the book, where he depicts the wild rumpus on three successive spreads. Breaking the framewhere part of the illustration extends beyond the straight line separating it from the white space of the frameis a technique that often results in a feeling of tension or excitement for the viewer. When an illustration breaks the frame, it is as if it is struggling to emerge from the restraint provided by the frame. In the seventh opening of Where the Wild Things Are, the tree on the left side of the illustration of Maxs private boat breaks the frame onto the left-hand page; it intensifies the feeling of an expanding world as Max nears the place where the wild things are. Donald Murray, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and novelist, has said that a good ending always circles back to the beginning. This is as true for a visual text as it is for a verbal one. This brings the story to a satisfying closure and is one of the principal ways the artist achieves resolution and a sense of completion. I would go so far as to say that every carefully crafted picturebook makes important connections in some way between the first and last illustrations. In the Night Kitchen begins and ends with Mickey safe in bed. Where the Wild Things Are opens with Max being sent to his room and closes with him back in the same room, with the symbolic assurance of his mothers love in the form of a supper that is still hot. This symmetry is aesthetically pleasing to us because it is so unlike the experiences of our everyday lives, where true closure and resolution happen so seldom. In Barbara Baders (1976) memorable phrase, we experience the drama

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of the turning of the page (p. 1) as we proceed from one set of facing pages to the next. Steiner (1982) points out that in most books, the particular portions of the text on successive pages are meaningless divisions in a continuous span of meaning (p. 142). When we read a novel, the page breaks contribute nothing to our experience; they are a necessary nuisance more than anything else, momentarily breaking the narrative flow as we hurry to continue reading. In contrast, the page turns in a picturebook have a complex semiotic significance because they have been carefully planned. The picturebook is not only a slowmotion series of presented verbal and visual images; the author or illustrator can use the brief hiatus in various meaningful ways as we turn the page. Page breaks can function as signals of changing perspectives, psychological states, or changing emotions on the part of the characters in the book; they may redirect our feelings or our attention. They may create suspense and drama, they may confirm or foil our predictions, and they may represent gaps in the narrative that the reader or viewer must bridge. In Where the Wild Things Are, Sendak has used the page breaks in all of these ways. Consider, for example, the first three openings. In the first opening, we see a picture of Max in his wolf suit, using a huge hammer to nail a knotted sheet into the wall as a support for his makeshift tent. The text reads, The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind. This incomplete sentence and phrase suggest that there is more mischief ahead; we might predict that Max is going to be in deep trouble. The page turn gives us the opportunity to engage in these speculations, which are confirmed in the second opening, which shows Max in mid-leap, brandishing a fork and chasing a worried looking dog. The text reads, and anotherstill not completing the sentence. The first two openings are connected by rising action, as Maxs antics become more naughty. The page turn to the third opening provides the time to ask what will happen now and involves much gap-filling, because this third opening shows Max in his bedroom, with a sour look on his face and his hand defiantly on his hip. The text on this opening finally completes the sentence: his mother called him WILD THING!/ and Max said ILL EAT YOU UP!/ so he was sent to bed without eating anything. Clearly a lot has happened. Mother has caught and scolded him, Max has been saucy, and Mother has marched him up to his room and shut the door. The turning of the page has signaled the change in Maxs mood and perhaps our change of attitude towards him, as well: after being slightly shocked and amused on the first two openings, we may now feel either a little pity for him or the satisfaction of knowing that he has finally been punished. The page turns in this book have been artfully designed; far from being meaningless necessities, they have increased our engagement and pleasure, contributing positively to our total experience of the book. Maurice Sendak "Our work is very peculiar, idiosyncratic," Sendak told New York Times contributor Eleanor Blau. "I don't believe in things literally for children. That's a reduction." Believing that children and adults should be treated with equal respect, he added: "Children are more open in their hearts and head[s] for what you're doing.... They're the best audience in town." Where the Wild Things Are is the first in a trilogy, to be followed by In the Night Kitchen (1970) and Outside over There (1981), which, in Sendak's words, are "all variations on the same theme: how children master various feelings--anger, boredom, fear, frustration, jealousy--and manage to come to grips with the realities of their lives." Where the Wild Things Are With the publication of Where the Wild Things Are in 1963, Sendak felt that he had ended his apprenticeship. His childhood experiences, years of illustrations for other authors' books, and psychoanalysis came together in the fantasies of Max, the boy in the story who is sent to bed without his supper, and the monsters he encounters in the world of the wild things. The story is

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rooted in the very real fears that children have of being left alone or not cared for by their parents. Many critics and child psychologists, such as Bruno Bettelheim, felt that the book was too scary for sensitive children. Sendak was vindicated when the book won the Caldecott Medal in 1964. In his acceptance speech, he said, " from their earliest years children live on familiar terms with disrupting emotions, fear and anxiety are an intrinsic part of their everyday lives, they continually cope with frustrations as best they can. And it is through fantasy that children achieve catharsis. It is the best means they have for taming Wild Things." Sendak led the way in creating more realistic child characters, moving away from the nostalgic models of innocence and sweetness portrayed in books published before the 1960s. By creating drawings inspired by the paintings of Degas and Cassatt as much as by nineteenth-century illustrators and modern cartoons, he also quickly demonstrated his unusual adaptability. Reflecting the view of many, critic John Rowe Townsend, in his Written for Children: An Outline of EnglishLanguage Children's Literature, dubbed Sendak "the greatest creator of picture books in the hundred-odd years' history of the form." Despite his popularity, Sendak has also been the subject of some controversy. "Critics of Sendak's work often argue that youngsters are not ready for the themes and images he presents, wrote Selma G. Lanes in her The Art of Maurice Sendak. "Sendak has forthrightly confronted such sensitive subject matters as childhood anger, sexuality, or the occasionally murderous impulses of raw sibling rivalry," This "honesty has troubled or frightened many who would wish to sentimentalize childhoodto shelter children from their own psychological complexity or to deny that this complexity exists," explained Dictionary of Literary Biography contributor John Cotham. For Sendak, this exploration of children's feelings has been more personal. As he revealed to Steven Heller in Innovators of American Illustration, "my work was an act of exorcism, an act of finding solutions so that I could have peace of mind and be an artist and function in the world as a human being and a man. My mind doesn't stray beyond my own need to survive." Parts of Sendak's books are inspired by the author/illustrator's personal memories. For example, the monsters in Where the Wild Things Are were inspired by the artist's hated Brooklyn relatives. "I wanted the wild things to be frightening," Sendak remarked in The Art of Maurice Sendak. "But why? It was probably at this point that I remembered how I detested my Brooklyn relatives as a small child.... They'd lean way over with their bad teeth and hairy noses, and say something threatening like 'You're so cute I could eat you up.' And I knew if my mother didn't hurry up with the cooking, they probably would." Sendaks art Text the text uses patterns, such as rhyme and repeated phrases, which preschoolers love. For example, in "Where the Wild Things Are," Sendak writes that the wild things "roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws." young children enjoy the sound of language. For instance, Sendak describes Max's journey thus: "...he sailed off through night and day and in and out of weeks and almost over a year to where the wild things are." whether the subject is appropriate for a child's cognitive level and experience. Preschoolers can understand concrete objects but may not grasp abstract ideas. Max's transition from waking to dreaming includes familiar objects such as trees, vines and a boat. Illustrations 1. (Variation and unity) Max wears his wolf suit throughout the story. He resembles the wild things, who in turn mimic his posture and walk. 2. Skillful use of visual elements such as line, shape and texture. In Max's dream, familiar shapes become bigger. The wild things are larger versions of himself. Interplay Between Text and Pictures 1. Sendak's choice of subdued color throughout the story underscores its dreamlike aspects. 2. pictures add details that flesh out the story. Sendak's text states that Max "made mischief of one kind and another," but the pictures show what he did. 3. they add depth and meaning not expressed in the text. For example, the grass and leaves in the wild things' land resemble Max's bedroom carpet and the houseplant by his window. These details suggest that the wild things are inside Max's dream and that their world derives from his, although the text never states that information.

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Maurice Sendak gives some insights into his writing style in Worlds of Childhood - The Art and Craft of Writing for Children. With me, everything begins with writing. No pictures at all - you just shut the Polaroid off; you dont want to be seduced by pictures because then you begin to write for pictures. Images come in language, language, language: in phrases, in verbal constructs, in poetry, whatever. Ive never spent less than two years on the text of one of my picture books, even thought each of them is approximately 380 words long. Only when the text is finished - when my editor thinks its finished - do I begin the pictures. Then I put the film in my head. Children love to read about themselves, to read about their older or younger brothers and sisters, to read about their place in the family Sendaks art addresses our deepest, frequently repressed, often unspeakable concerns about ourselves and our loved ones. Often it speaks to children and to the adults who read to them from a place of anguished inner struggle, struggle that had rarely been directly addressed in childrens literature prior to Sendak. In straightforward, undisguised fashion, Sendaks work has addressed problems as monumental for children as being in a rage at mother, relating to a depressed or emotionally unavailable mother, or coming to terms with a mother who cannot or will not recognise her childs concerns or state of mind. He manages nonetheless to maintain the optimistic view that all of these troubles can be tamed, even if not fully overcome, through imagination. The ultimate magic of his work resides in his presentations of imagination, dream, fantasy and ultimately art itself as sources of resilience, of the strength to soldier on. Sendak utilizes composition in his master piece Where the Wild Things Are. This book tells the story of a boy as he heads out into the wild of his mind. As his fantasy grows and grows the pictures within the book grow larger and larger, then as the boy (Max) leaves his imaginary world to return home the pictures grow smaller and smaller. The story in this way tells both of the vast size of the mind and the intimacy of home. Something that is reinforced by the fact that dinner is waiting for Max on his return home. Francis Spufford suggests that the book is "one of the very few picture books to make an entirely deliberate, and beautiful, use of the psychoanalytic story of anger". Mary Pols of Time magazine wrote that "[w]hat makes Sendak's book so compelling is its grounding effect: Max has a tantrum and in a flight of fancy visits his wild side, but he is pulled back by a belief in parental love to a supper 'still hot,' balancing the seesaw of fear and comfort." New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis noted that "there are different ways to read the wild things, through a Freudian or colonialist prism, and probably as many ways to ruin this delicate story of a solitary child liberated by his imagination." In Selma G. Lanes's book The Art of Maurice Sendak, Sendak discusses Where the Wild Things Are along with his other books In the Night Kitchen and Outside Over There as a sort of trilogy centered on children's growth, survival, change and fury. He indicated that the three books are "all variations on the same theme: how children master various feelings"The book was awarded the Caldecott Medal in 1964 "Wild Things ran into a lot of trouble when it was published,'' Sendak told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in a Dec. 4, 1989, story. ''It was considered ugly. It was considered far-fetched. It was considered too frightening to children. Bruno Bettelheim denounced the book, which put a damper on it for a long time." Twelve years later, Sendak was slamming Bettelheim again, telling the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Aug. 10, 2001): When [Where the Wild Things Are] that came out, there were psychologists who said, "This is a bad book. Any mother who sends their child to bed without dinner is a terrible mother." They objected to that, they objected to him being so rude to his mother, they objected to her yelling back at him, they objected to the Wild Things being too scary. They objected to everything. When it was first published it was very novel and different. In fact, a very important psychologist [Bruno Bettelheim] said that. He did take that back later in life. He did me a lot of damage at the beginning. [Brackets in the original.] Sendak was still seething about Bettelheim in a June 4, 2005, interview with NPR: Sendak: And that creepoh, that creep, that psychiatrist, Bruno Bettelheim ... NPR: Who ... Sendak: ... otherwise known by me personally as "Beno Brutalheim," because he wrote a long article on Wild Things, which completely destroyed the book. NPR: Bruno Bettelheim, when Wild Things came out, said that it might frighten children. Sendak: [Adopts foreign accent] "Don't leave the book in a room without a light, because the kid might die of a heart attack."

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No, he didn't say that, but you've got it. [Soundbite of laughter] Sendak: Mr. Brutalheim, may he rest in peace. But like Max's travels in Where the Wild Things Are, Sendak's version is almost completely imaginary. Bettelheim's criticism came more than five years after Where the Wild Things Are was published, appearing in the March 1969 edition of Ladies' Home Journal, where he answered mothers' child-rearing questions in a monthly column. Furthermore, Bettelheim admitted in his column that he wasn't familiar with the book and that his comments "may be very unfair." (Later, he would confess that he had never opened it.) He judged the book based on descriptions provided by the mothers. What did Bettelheim say? The offending column, titled "The Care and Feeding of Monsters," is reproduced in Heads On and We Shoot: The Making of Where the Wild Things Are. Bettelheimwho doesn't name Sendakwrites, "What's wrong with the book is that the author was obviously captivated by an adult psychological understanding of how to deal with destructive fantasies in the child. What he failed to understand is the incredible fear it evokes in the child to be sent to bed without supper, and this by the first and foremost giver of food and securityhis mother." Bettelheim's assessment was negative, but hardly book-wrecking, especially considering the grand reception the book enjoyed. In March 1964, it received the Caldecott Medal for the best American picture book, the most prestigious prize of its kind. Today, there are 19 million copies of it in print around the world. Some reviewers did think the book might be too frightening for children. In a Jan. 22, 1966, New Yorker (subscription required) profile of Sendak, Nat Hentoff collects several of the critical responses. "We should not like to have it left about where a sensitive child might find it to pore over in the twilight," stated the Journal of Nursery Education. Publishers' Weekly offered a mix of praise and criticism, saying that "the plan and technique of the illustrations are superb. But they may well prove frightening, accompanied as they are by a pointless and confusing story." Library Journal's critic wrote, "This is the kind of story that many adults will question and for many reasons, but the child will accept it wisely and without inhibition, as he knows it is written for him." Perhaps the most insightful review harvested by Hentoff came from the Cleveland Press: "Boys and girls may have to shield their parents from this book. Parents are very easily scared." Although Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are may seem at first glance to be an excessively scary book for small children, the details of the illustrations and text serve to give the wild things a tame appearance. It is through the humanization of the wild things and the control Max has over his adventure that young children are able to have the book read to them without excessive fear. Toward the end of the story, there is a scene where Max realizes that he is done with his adventure with the wild things and wants to go back home. At this point, the wild things retire into a serene state that contrasts with the wild "rumpus" of the previous pages. The pictures and text of the page suggest that the wild things are peaceful creatures and Max has complete control over them. As the book nears its end, it becomes evident that criticisms of the book as being overly scary are not justified because the wild things are portrayed as being respectful, happy creatures who obey and get along with a child. The features of the illustrations which might be considered scary are quickly overpowered by a closer look at the facial expressions and the accompanying text. Especially for a child, a first glance is dominated by the formidable size and sharpness of the horns, claws, and teeth of the wild things. However, upon closer inspection, there are other details, such as the fact that the wild things are all smiling and sleeping that give the wild things a more lethargic nature. In the picture, all three of the wild things are happily asleep after a night of wild rumpus. They have content smiles on their faces and are in relaxed positions. The text emphasizes the gentle, agreeable nature of the wild things, as it reads, "'Now stop!' Max said and sent the wild things off to bed without their supper." The wild things are depicted as having obeyed the orders of a child, just as Max obeyed his parents when they sent him to bed without his supper. This role reversal for Max as he changes from being disciplined to disciplining others puts the wild things at a state even under that of a child, making their size and features less scary. Also, the wild thing right of center is humanized by his feet with normal toes, which contrast with the claws of the other wild things and Max in his wolf suit. It gives him some softer edges which, combined with his fur, draw the attention away from his horns and clawed fingers. Despite their claws, fangs, and horns which stand out at first, the wild things are much less fearinspiring upon closer inspection because of their calm nature, humanization, and obedience to a child. Much of the illustration is focused on the wild things, but the text emphasizes Max's role as the focus of the story. Throughout the book, Max is very much in control of and enjoying his fantasy, which makes it difficult to think of the wild things as being particularly scary. In this page, Max is sitting in the corner under a tent with a crown on his head, a frown on his lips, and a forlorn look in his eyes. The text refers to him twice as "king," but he does not appear to be enjoying his job much. It goes on to explain that he was just getting lonely. He was not frightened of the wild things, even though they must

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have towered over him with their sharp claws. Children reading the book may identify with Max and understand that he was not scared of the wild things, so they too have no reason to be scared. Also, Max was able to choose to go home when he no longer wanted to be there, which should also be an added comfort for children reading the book. Max's status as king and ability to control his interactions with the wild things serves to make the creatures less scary than they first appeared to be. Sendak's illustrations and text in Where the Wild Things Are create a world in which a young boy is able to have an adventure with wild things while remaining in control of them. Children who have the ability to look beyond the pointy claws, horns, and teeth and see the emotions conveyed through the facial expressions and text should not be scared of the book. His parents inability to accept his being gay not to mention his being an artist is part of why Sendak says in the documentary that he "hated" them. He says they never wanted to have kids in the first place and were terrible at parenting, giving him a miserable childhood. Clearly, this is part of the reason Sendak never wanted kids himself. "If you don't do it well, why do it?" he says. Finally, there is Sendak's eerie obsession with death, which is nothing new he explains exactly how it first arose in childhood but it has apparently become more profound as he himself grows older. Sendak has always been a "controversial" author. Where the Wild Things Are was intensely criticized at the time of its publication (and was banned in many places) for its "angry" little boy and its absent parents. "Where the Wild Things Are" is one of the most popular picture books of all time exemplifying Sendak's incredible knowledge of the textual narrative through illustration. The cover of this book is interesting for it does not show the protagonist at all but the wild things slumbering with a ship in the background. Within picture books covers are privileged information such that in a good story they will tell the readers what the most important part of the book is. Although when the book is first read the readers do not start out understanding Sendak's cover the choice of this cover alludes to the moment when the main character of the story Max leaves the wild things sleeping in order to return home. It is this choice, to leave his wild fantasy and return home to where his mother loves him that is the point which Sendak's story has built up to. The readers first introduction to the main character Max is of him stalking some monsters across the title page, his eyes mischievous and mean hearted, while the monsters despite their huge size look afraid as they attempt to stalk away. This is the first double page spread and the only one for a long time, in this book Sendak uses the double page spread to indicate that Max is at his most wild. The double page spread can also be said to show the dream world in which Max rules. By having the double spread on the title page before the story begins we are left to wonder how often Max enters his wild dream world. For although the first picture is of Max in his dream world, the book itself starts with him outside of his dream world, causing his mischief in the real world. As the story goes on however the pictures (on page right) will grow and grow, as he gets closer to his dream world where the wild things are. Further allusions to Max's constant forays into the dream world are found in the second picture where he is seen to chase a hapless dog with a fork. In the background is a crude child's drawing by him of one of the wild things, letting us know that these creatures are indeed in his imagination prior to the event depicted within the book. For chasing the dog among other things Max is of course sent to his room. Although his mother is never visually depicted the text indicates that Max threatens to eat her up when she sends him to his room. It is this childish behavior that makes Sendak's book so believable. Max is indeed a little boy, with random threats, and chaotic dreams. Once sent to his room we see for the first time Max truly isolated. For the picture is now much larger, though not yet taking up the page it has grown large enough at this point to show the walls of the room in which Max now finds himself imprisoned. But in this picture book there is no prison but ones own selfish thoughts and so Max is able to escape his room by imagining a forest growing in it, until he is able to stalk off into the dark woodland night. He then sails away on the ocean with the woods disappearing onto the right edge of page left as the whole of page right becomes dominated by Max's imaginary world. And so Max sails on into the land where the wild things are, and in so doing the illustration finally becomes a full double spread. On arriving in to where the wild things are Max is greeted by the wild things who try to scare Max, but he tames the wild things, scaring them into submission and then becoming their king. As he does this we see the white space for the text at the bottom of the pages shrinking until at last it along with the text vanishes completely. So for three double spreads Max and the wild things howl and wail at the moon, play in the trees, and finally Max rides on the shoulders of the wild things as their king. Then however as the wild things go to sleep the text reappears along with the white space on the bottom. The pictures from this point on begin to shrink again.

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It is through this shrinking pictures as will as text and visual narrative that Sendak is letting us that Max is growing bored with his dream, and that the smell of food is calling him out of his dream. So he sails away from the wild things, back into his own room, which again is enclosed, but on the table in the corner we see Max's supper waiting for him. Letting us know that outside of the wild worlds of our mind there are those who love us. From an Interview with Sendak and Spike Jonze (film director) Sendak: The monsters were based on relatives. They came from Europe, and they came on weekends to eat, and my mom had to cook. Three aunts and three uncles who spoke no English, practically. They grabbed you and twisted your face, and they thought that was an affectionate thing to do. And I knew that my mother's cooking was pretty terrible, and it also took forever, and there was every possibility that they would eat me, or my sister or my brother. We really had a wicked fantasy that they were capable of that. We couldn't taste any worse than what she was preparing. So that's who the Wild Things are. They're foreigners, lost in America, without a language. And children who are petrified of them, and don't understand that these gestures, these twistings of flesh, are meant to be affectionate. So there you go. Maurice, what did you think when you first saw the movie? Sendak: I thought it was never going to end. [Laughter] I say that to be funny. The truth of the matter is, I saw immediately a combination of things that I wanted and I loved. The courage of the child, the danger of the situationit could turn on a dime. They could have eaten him. All of that was apparent right from the start. The artistry was something they would have to take care of. I was happy right from the beginning. I didn't have to suffer like they didschlepping from this place to that place, dealing with the studio. One disagreement you had is that in the book, Max stays in his room. In the film, he runs away from home. Sendak: It was one of my favorite scenes in the book. It was so much about the ability of children to imagine themselves in another place. He was a prisoner, locked in his room by his mother. And by his imagination he was able to get through those few hours where he was isolated and trapped. That's how I saw it. But there was something so totally valid in what Spike was doing. I remember I was having fights with my editor about this book. What were the fights about? Sendak: Well, I'll just give you a silly example. The entire staff at the publishing house were keen on my changing the word "hot" to "warm" on the last page. Because "hot" meant "burn." Jonze: The soup was "still hot." Sendak: It was going to burn the kid. I couldn't believe it. But it turned into a real world war, just that word, and I won. How did you win? Sendak: Just going at it. Just trying to convey how dopey "warm" sounded. Unemotional. Undramatic. Everything about that book is "hot." From Sendaks interview with Bill Moyers

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Once upon a time, Maurice Sendak wandered into a dark forest. Childhood has never been the same. SENDAK: We're animals. We're violent. We're criminal. And if I've done anything, I've had kids express themselves as they are. ANNOUNCER: His most famous hero dared to be a rebel and pay the price. No supper. SENDAK: People often say, "What happens to Max?" And it's such a coy question that I always say, "Well, he's in therapy forever. He has to wear a straitjacket when he's with his therapist." ANNOUNCER: He's been called the Picasso of children's literature, godfather to generations of readers. How does a man with no kids of his own know so much about the wild things of childhood? SENDAK: You're going to have to try to believe me... MOYERS: My friend Joseph Campbell once told me long before I met you that one of the great moments in literature is this scene in WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE: "And when he came to the place where the wild things are, they roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws till Max said, 'Be still' and tamed them with the magic trick of staring into all their yellow eyes without blinking once. And they were frightened and called him the most wild thing of all and made him king of all wild things." Joseph Campbell went and got that and read it to me. And he said, "That is a great moment because it's only when a man tames his own demons that he becomes the king of himself if not of the world." And he said that was a great moment in literature. SENDAK: That's very moving. I did not know. MOYERS: But, you were just making it up? SENDAK: I was just making it up. MOYERS: A long time ago? SENDAK: A long time ago. I was 32 when I did that book. But if he's right, that's a wonderful and touching idea. MOYERS: But do you believe it's true? Do we all, adults and children, have to come to grips with our own untamed passions and... SENDAK: Oh, yes. We're animals. We're violent. We're criminal. We're not so far away from the gorillas and the apes, those beautiful creatures. So, of course. And then, we're supposed to be civilized. We're supposed to go to work every day. We're supposed to be nice to our friends and send Christmas cards to our parents. We're supposed to do all these things which trouble us deeply because it's so against what we naturally would want to do. And if I've done anything, I've had kids express themselves as they are, impolitely, lovingly... they don't mean any harm. They just don't know what the right way is. And as it turns out sometimes the so-called "right way" is utterly the wrong way. What a monstrous confusion. MOYERS: Is writing books like this something like guerilla warfare? SENDAK: Yes. That's well said. Because you're really fighting yourself all the way along the line. And I don't know... I never set out to write books for children. I don't have a feeling that I'm gonna save children or my life is devoted. MOYERS: With the WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, it created a big sensation. I mean, librarians would not put it in the... in fact, there's one librarian who said, "This is not a book you leave in the presence of sensitive children to find in the twilight."

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SENDAK: Yes. There was a torrent of, "Keep this book away from children. This is..." MOYERS: Why? SENDAK: I think probably it was the first American children's bookGod knows I didn't set out to do this, it was my first picture book. But, I was talking about kids I knew and me. A book, an American book, where the child actually daunts his mother and threatens her. No way. No way. And then on top of that, she puts him in a room and denies him food. No way. Mamas never do that kinda thing. Kids never get pissed at their parents. Unheard of. And the worst offense, he comes home. She leaves food for him. And he's not punished. Not punished. MOYERS: When you had Max get mad at his mother knowing... did you know that this was going to enrage people? That they... SENDAK: No. My mother got mad at me all the time. It didn't seem an extraordinary thing at all. I mean, it seemed to me she was always mad. And in Yiddish, she called me the equivalent of "wild thing" and chased me all over the house. We used to hide in the street and hope she forgot before I crept up in the evening. It was all natural as your father took swipes at you that you dodge. And your mother was rough, rough, rough. MOYERS: Were you ever sent to bed without supper? SENDAK: I often went to bed without supper cause I hated my mother's cooking. So, to go to bed without supper was not a torture to me. If she was gonna hurt me, she'd make me eat. That's true, too. But, it was a really unkempt, unruly small apartment, three children, father who worked so hard, mother who had problems emotionally and mentally. And we didn't know that. Your mommy's supposed to be perfect. She should be there for you, love you, kiss you. Every movie we ever saw, Claudette Colbert hugging her children. We knew what it should be like. And it wasn't. And we had no sympathy at all. MOYERS: What I hear you describing is not a story that you just made up. It's a story you experienced. SENDAK: Yeah. Well, that's what art is. I mean, you don't make up stories. You live your life. And I was not Max. I did not have the courage that Max had. And I didn't have the mother that Max had. Who would give you, love you and you know this little scene which is so trivial. It happens at everybody's house, happens every Tuesday and Thursday. He has a fit. She has a fit. It'll go on till he's about 35, goes into therapy, wonders why he can't get married, okay? Cause people often say, "What happens to Max?" And it's such a coy question that I always say, "Well, he's in therapy forever. He has to wear a straitjacket when he's with his therapist." From: Maurice Sendak By Hal Marcovitz, Kyle Zimmer Now of course childhood is wonderful ... but then lets say that there are dark corners and alleyways and shadows which are [and] mustnt be ignored. The story is made up of 338 words. First a homemade tent, made with bed linen and a string of handkerchiefs tied together. Later as king of wild things occupies a grand and luxurious tent. Elements of Maxs real world merge into his dream world. Bright colours applied in wide strokes. Black ink accentuates the features of the characters in the book. In The Art of Maurice Sendak, Selma G Lanes commented that the pages featuring the wild rumpus ...probably comprise the best thumbed pages in contemporary childrens literature. In the first, Max and four large wild things dance and bay at the moon. Max, wearing his crown, is clearly a fit king of all wild things. Inexplicably, a full moon now shines over their merrymaking, but at this enchanted moment no reader will quibble with the artists lunar license. The

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second spread, which shifts to morning light shows Max and his companions swinging companionably, like monkeys, from the familiar trees. In the final spread, Max is mounted triumphantly on the bristly shoulders of the wildest wild thing, and all creatures look ecstatically happy. When Max willingly gives up his crown to sail back home into the night of his very own room where he found his supper waiting for him, the illustration shows a smiling, spent Max, his wolf hood slipping off his head (a subtle reminder that he has been purged off his wildness and rage). On the table we see Maxs supper, with a large piece of cake for dessert (suggesting that his mother has entirely forgiven him.) Critics attacked him saying that a childrens book was no place to show a child directing his anger at his mother, or, conversely, a mother punishing her child by sending him to bed without supper. ...Child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim said that Sendak chose an inappropriate way to describe the destructive fantasies in the child, adding, What he failed to understand is the incredible fear it evokes in the child to be sent to bed without supper, and this by the first and foremost giver of food and security his mother. Critics also wondered whether Maxs response to his mothers punishment his threat to eat her would spark in nightmares in the books readers. Alice Dalgliesh: has disturbing possibilities for the child. Sendak said that there is an inescapable fact of childhood the awful vulnerability of children and their struggle to make themselves king of all wild things. From Maurice Sendak In one of the earlier versions of the story, when Max announces his intentions to leave his new friends, the wild things voice their protests. But Max didnt care because the Wild things never loved him best of all or let him eat from grown up plates or showed him how to call long distance. So Max gave up being King of Where the Wild Things Are. Wild Things Are Child Things, said Max as he steered his boat back over the year and in and out of weeks and through the day. Sendak then concluded that there were too many words, describing too much, and the words would dominate the action on the pages. Its a funny kind of juggling act, which takes a lot of technique and experience to keep the rhythm going...The illustrators first job is to comprehend deeply the nature of his text, then to give life to that comprehension in his own medium, the picture. I like to think of myself as setting words to pictures. A true picturebook is a visual poem. Sendak. From Children's literature By Peter Hunt It could be argued that Blakes collaboration with Russell Hoban produced one of the twentieth centurys masterpieces for children How Tom beat (1974) in which Hobans deadpan prose and Blakes sly images combine to produce a composite text which remains on the childs side. Blakes virtually incomprehensible picture accompanies Hobans description of the game of womble: The captains side raked first...six ladders. p. 76 The joint masterwork HT (77) BCN + HHS has text by Hoban and illustrations by Quentin Blake and can be held up as an exemplar of the possibilities of the picture book. It not only explores the balance of power between adults and children, but also pokes fun at the arbitrariness of rule bound world of adult behaviour. Tom beats the Captain at games whose rules are totally obscure even especially with the help of the illustrations: the pictures deliberately do not illustrate (thus shifting the power in the text from book to reader). From International Companion Encyclopedia of Children's Literature By Peter Hunt, Sheila G. Bannister Ray

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Blakes pictures, in How Tome Beat tease the reader-viewer by withholding precise information about the 3 games which are central to the story, thus drawing attention to our dependency upon sufficient information to bridge national gaps. Russell Hobans droll tale will appeal most to older kids and adults, despite its picturebook format. (Hobans syntax can be quite complex, and the more subtle aspects of his humor might be lost on younger readers.) And though Quentin Blakes artwork is not usually to my taste, I found his illustrations well-suited to this particular story. Whether youre the type who fools around or the type who wears an iron hat, How Tom Beat Captain Najork is a surprisingly sophisticated and well-written diversion.

From Russell Hoban/forty years: essays on his writings for children By Alida Allison Monsters, Machines, and the Place of Chocolate Cake: Hobans Picture Books by Jamie Madden 25 Puissant youth against Waning Man David Rees Childhood innocence [is] pitted against adult incomprehension, repressed adults disliking nonconformity. The book tells the story of Toms battle to remain a child, and page after page shows him engaging in his favourite activity, fooling around....His maiden aunt, Miss Fidget Winkham-Strong, whose iron hat, bustle, and tight collar would give away her character if her name didnt, objects ... Too much playing is not good; ...You had better stop it and do something useful. In a reading at San Diego State University, Hoban made his personal feelings about turning play into work quite clear: Lets say someone turns a kid loose and the kid is walking along the beach picking up stones. You just know that some grown-up is going to come along and say, Isnt that nice, picking up stones. Now lets sort the stones into colours and lets put them in a box and lets write about sorting stones. Lets work with that.... I just wish that that kid who picked up the stone could be left alone. However, the main thrust of HTB.., of course, is not that play should be allowed despite being impractical, but that all of Toms fooling around actually is useful, for it allows him to defeat Capt Najork, who is employed by aunt FWS to teach Tom a lesson. In fact, aunt FWS makes an attempt to present Capt N as a kind of didactic monster, the monster who stands as a warning against exploration of its uncertain demesnes. But despite her threatening description, he turns out to be no monster at all. Instead he is a man who has turned fooling around into a series of elaborate, competitive, highly constructed games. The bits and pieces with which Tom played have become structured into ridiculous pieces of equipment, as in the sneedball ramp stamped Sneedball Mfg. Coy. But the very seriousness with which Capt. N and his men attack the sports assures their failure, for they pole too hard and shovelled too fast and tired themselves out...to 49. p. 25 In Capt N, the creative impulse has been tamed. Although the text shows repeatedly that the captains sports have roots in the kind of fooling around that Tom does, games played on ladders and in mud and with barrels, the capt has turned play into a species of work. His sportsmen are hired. He participates in the Sneedball Championship. This is play socialized and thereby weakened; Tom defeats Capt Najork handily. But Ts real enemy in this story is not Capt. N. His enemies are 2 women, Aunt FWS and the princess who does not appear in the book. The first of these women wants to strip away his childhood; so would the second if she were allowed into the story.... Instead, the Capt is given the maiden aunt as a bride, and Tom advertises for a new aunt. Bundlejoy Cosysweet, who had a floppy hat with flowers on it and long, long hair is the woman who combines the best of both worlds for Tom, allowing him both the mature power to determine his own actions and the ability to remain a free creative child. Unlike Toms real and powerful aunt, Bundlejoy is a weak figure. In fact, her weakness is an important part of her appeal for Tom, who flatly tells her, no mutton and no cabbage and potato sog...And I do lots of fooling around. Those are my conditions. She accepts them. Clearly, if she had not, Tom would have looked for another new aunt. But because she is an aunt, instead of princess, Tom is not required to assume the sexual maturity that would follow marriage. So he abjures maturity in favour of the freedom of childhood of course, he is only able to do so through the collaboration of an adult who abdicates her own power of maturity. CRITICAL RECEPTION Hoban has enjoyed widespread critical appreciation for his works for both older and younger readers. Christine Wilkie has argued that, "Russell Hoban is one of few contemporary writers of literature for children, who is in the process of challenging the conventions by which the genre has become recognized, and in which the child has become inscribed It invites them to be child enough to be themselves, to make of it whatever they want it to be, and to find in it whatever helps them to experience the actuality behind the appearance of things." Benjamin DeMott suggested in the Atlantic Monthly that "these books are unique, first, because the adults in their pages are usually humorous, precise of speech, and understandingly

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conversant with general life, and second, because the author confrontsnot unfancifully but without kinky secret garden stuffproblems with which ordinary parents and children have to cope." Bedtime for Frances, for instance, concerns nighttime fears and is regarded by many as a classic in children's literature; and according to a Saturday Review contributor, "The exasperated humor of this book could only derive from actual parental experience, and no doubt parents will enjoy it." "Hoban has established himself as a writer with a rare understanding of childhood (and parental) psychology, sensitively and humorously portrayed in familiar family situations," noted Allison.For all their suspense, though, "in my books there aren't characters who are simply bad or simply good," Hoban told Fred Hauptfuhrer in People. "Nothing in life is that simple." Peter Hunt Hoban remains a writer who operates with equal subtlety and intelligence, at and beyond the extreme reaches of childrens literature RH: Let me read you something I'm working on for a speech to Children's Literature New England in Cambridge: 'All of us live in our minds. Maybe you'll say "oh no, I live in the world, in the real world" but the real world is only available to you through your mind. So you do in fact live in your mind. That's pretty scary, isn't it? The mind is busy all the time, night and day, making sense of what our senses take in: The sounds of traffic, the images on the TV news, the smell of the baby, the taste of strawberry shortcake, the touch of naked skin. Here is the car, there is the office, here is a clock, you're five minutes late for the rest of your life which is now just beginning. Now playing: The Rest of Your Life, starring everybody and everything and also starring you. Night and day, the mind, which is maybe your individual mind, and mine, and may be the one big mind we're all part of, is busy putting the world together and also making its independent connections while you and I are otherwise occupied.' One doesn't know, really, whether one is part of one big Mind or whether there are really individual minds. There are scientists that have put forward the theory of the anthropic universe, which is that the universe is what it is because we are there to witness it. And I have sometimes thought that we are the organ of perception of the universe. That is our function, that's what we do, that's what we are. What I do is what I think most people avoid. I think most people for their comfort and their peace of mind stay within the limited reality consensus that the only reality is what you can see, what can you touch, what is available through the senses. And I think they prefer not to trouble themselves with trying to work out anything more than that. I find that I am addicted to the investigation of the life of the mind and the life of the mind is very very strange indeed. A legacy of Hoban's fascination with ghost stories is the London gothic that permeates his work. It's always dusk on the streets of Fulham, and he is forever finding ways of mythologising the city and its underground. Equally important is his faith in visual art as a trigger for other ways of thinking and seeing. "One character says that if you could grasp one image completely you could grasp everything, and I think there is something in that." His characters are united in their quest to glimpse other modes of being beyond the everyday. As with Hoban's favourite artist, Daumier, this means teasing the border between the seen and the unseen, between reality and dream, so that reading a Hoban novel is like watching a film being played on an opening and closing door: you're never quite sure whether you are looking in or out. When it comes to the writing process itself, Hoban works by association, and his exo-brain is useful here. "When I'm looking for an idea, if I suddenly have a hankering for a particular piece of music or if I go to a shelf and randomly pick a book, I think: maybe something out there is trying to tell me something. I feel as if I am offering myself and I'm hoping that something will come in." Hoban's feeling for the unconscious and the unconventional tries to show us a way back inside, an endeavour often aided by classical mythology. "In an essay, I wrote that all of the human perceptions of forces beyond our understanding and control which have been given the names of gods and goddesses - they're still alive. Those forces are still there and our response to them is still there." Women, he believes, are instrumental in restoring us to the spiritual life. "I think women are essentially stronger than men," he says. "Luisa in The Medusa Frequency [1987] is based on my wife, and the character says of her that she could intuit herself in her self. She didn't need to produce anything, she was simply herself. Whereas he didn't know how to exist without producing something." Usually formidable hybrids of muse, goddess and femme fatale, Hoban's leading ladies, as he writes in Amaryllis, "could lead a man to somewhere he'd never get back from". Which might also be true of Hoban's stories, only he always makes sure to set them against the dull reality that would otherwise claim us. "Sometimes we feel we can curve along with the faade of reality," he says, "but it's tissue-paper thin, and you can fall through it: into the madhouse, into prison, into the cemetery." His modern myths offer a dreaming-space from which to challenge this reality. Naturally, this has made him something of a cult writer - "If by cult writer, you mean very narrow appeal," he laughs. As an autodidact, Hoban denies any idea that his writing is esoteric. Then, with a typical twist of humour, he adds: "But my work's not for people whose lips move when they read, certainly."

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But there is value in goofing off, fooling around and playing too, which is the moral behind How Tom beat Captain Najork and his hired Sportsmen by Russell Hoban, another favourite book of mine supposedly intended for children. Whilst Eggers re-imagined the picture book Where the wild things are for adults, Hoban who is an award winning author best known for Ridley Walker and Angelicas Grotto also writes childrens books, much like Roald Dahl, who also used Quentin Blakes illustration skills.

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