Where the Wild Things are

Where the Wild Things Are.

As a child I grew up a little different than many of the children around me. I was raised by my mother. When I was two we moved home to Newfoundland from Ontario where I was born. My parents were never married and my Dad was not involved in my life. I always felt like something was missing and my imagination was pretty eccentric trying to fill that emptiness with creations of my own mind. I had imaginary pets I would take for walks and take to the park and talk to. My reading level, according to my teachers, was a few years ahead of my age level. I would get so immersed in the stories, I’d connect on a completely different level with the lives and characters in the books I would read. I wouldn’t be able to tell you how many books I read as a child. It kinda let me forget about the chaos and my emotions and feelings about my own life and let me take on all these other roles. It was my therapy. I’d envision and become part of the pages I’d read, and when a story was finished, if I was really captivated by it, I experienced what I can only explain as a kind of mourning. Mourning the end of a journey I was on. Which would typically lead me to pick up the next story and start the cycle again.

I always had a book on hand. I would stay up under the covers well into the night secretly reading. Actually, believe it or not, when I would get in trouble, sometimes as a punishment I wasn’t allowed to read.

One story that left a big impact on me would be “Where the Wild Things Are” by Maurice Sendak. There’s something that resinates with me in this story that I could never quite put my finger on. Maybe because unlike most children stories “Where the Wild Things Are” actually dives into the not so positive side of being a child. Learning to deal with these overwhelming emotions and having to try and figure out the concept of self control. Getting in trouble for being unable or unaware of how to think things through. It’s somewhat more of a dark tale into the mind of a child.

Maurice was a little rebellious in publishing “Where the Wild Things Are.” I mean it IS creative genius BUT quite controversial as well. And censorship played its role almost immediately, the story is now considered one of the top banned children’s books. But why?

If you’ve never read or heard of “Where the Wild Things Are” it’s a story about a boy named Max who dresses up in his wolf costume and like a little Tasmanian devil creates a whirl wind through his house of utter chaos and ends up getting sent to bed without supper. Once in his room his imagination creates a fortress where he sails to another land full of wild beasts and becomes their king. Max and his subjects run around the forest wrecking havoc and their fun eventually turns to not so much fun as he learns that sometimes doing whatever you want with no rules ends up hurting people around you. He then “returns” home where his mother left him a plate of food, still warm. Showing that regardless of what we do or how we behave our mothers love is unconditional and although she may have disciplined him for acting out, she did it so that he could learn and grow, but she would never let him go without.

Loving this wild, rebellious, imaginative, magical story I couldn’t help but see a bit of Max’s character in my own children. And maybe a little bit of his mother’s character in myself. So naturally they’ve also been read “Where the Wild Things Are” and are masters at engineering their own wild rumpus. In fact, my sons first birthday was actually themed “Wild One” and was centred around the story.

There’s something to be said about a controversial book that’s been around this long with so many adaptations. In one way or another, we can all relate to Max.

Friendly monsters. Being crowned leader of the group. Travel adventures to a far off land. Imagination run wild. These are the things of dreams, the stories that give us an escape away from our daily bustle and into our bedtime oasis. Replaying and embedding the lessons learned and tales told deep into our subconscious.