Before Maurice Sendak, most children’s books idealised childhood by presenting it as an innocent and overwhelmingly happy state. However, Sendak’s main character in Where The Wild Things Are is surrounded by resentment, conflicts, punishment and tantrums. The author spent the majority of his childhood years bed-bound, recovering from various illnesses, and critics say the book is autobiographical.
In this project I aim to capture the escapism and surrealism in Sendak’s work. At first, I wanted to recreate each image found in the book item-for-item, but I soon realised the idea was far-fetched. And how could my copy compare with Sendak’s original work? Instead, I settled on: "What if the story was real?"
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“The night Max wore his Wolf suit and made mischief of one kind, and another. His mother called him 'WILD THING' and Max said 'I'LL EAT YOU UP!' so he was sent to bed without eating anything.”
“And Max, the king of all wild things, was lonely and wanted to be where someone loved him best of all.”
“And the wild things roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws.”
“Inside all of us is Hope. Inside all of us is Fear. Inside all of us is Adventure. Inside all of us is… A Wild Thing.”
“There should be a place where only the things you want to happen, happen.”
“Then from far away across the world he smelled good things to eat, so he gave up being king of the wild things.”
