Where the Wild Things Are

The Caldcott Award-winning book I chose was “Where the Wild Things Are” by Maurice Sendak.  It is no surprise that this book is a Caldecott winner.  The two things that stand out most to me are the text and the structure.  This picture book is perfectly designed to interest both young and old readers.  As we are told in Chapter 5 of Horning’s From Cover to Cover, picture books need to be designed in a way where the text doesn’t overwhelm the reader.  Young children would find this book interesting because the pictures are detailed and the text is easily understood.  The pages are blank aside from a sentence or two and a “window” of illustration on each page.  This story makes me happy as it reminds me of the imagination of children/my students.  The young boy’s room becomes a forest and he finds himself sailing away for “almost a year” yet at the end of the book, he returns to his bedroom where his supper awaits him and it’s still hot.