Fuse 8 n’ Kate: Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak

At last. After 93 episodes, Kate and I have finally come face-to-face with the great Sendak masterpiece. Why did I decide to do the book today, rather than wait until we hit the 100th episode mark? Because, my friends, today is an auspicious day in and of itself. Today Fuse 8 n’ Kate the podcast officially becomes a School Library Journal property. You won’t see any changes on your end, but believe me, we’ve been cleaning up our act a bit. Our episodes, you may have noticed, are now a tight 30 minutes. We’ll be having more guest stars as well, which should be fun.

But for today’s book, we finally hit the title that appeared at #1 on my Top 100 Picture Books poll, both times that I conducted it. Does it deserve its everlasting fame and glory? Find out for yourself as Kate and I pick the darn thing apart. And believe me, there is a special kind of challenge in finding new things to say about this old chestnut.

Listen to the whole show here on Soundcloud or download it through iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, PlayerFM, or your preferred method of podcast selection.

Show Notes:

I am intrigued by Kate’s theory that this isn’t a wolf suit at all, but rather a tailored cat suit. I like the idea that the mom was asked by Max to provide him with one, purchased this, and then just made a wolf-like tail at the end. And considering how magnificent that tail is, I think she doesn’t get quite enough credit for her tailoring skills.

Kate’s theory is that they’re playing that schoolyard game where you have to make the other guy fall off of the monkey bars.

And this guy? Clearly he lost.

Not only does Max get supper after his behavior . . . he gets cake. CAKE!

The most famous final line in children’s literature? Probably:

Here is something I wrote up when this book appeared as #1 on my poll:

In terms of the scary factor (which is to say, whether kids would end up traumatized by the book) Nordstrom has this to say on the subject: “I think this book can frighten only a neurotic child or a neurotic adult.”  Later in Dear Genius (the collection of her letters) there’s an amusing note from 1974 from Ursula to Sendak where she mentions that Fran Manushkin wants to know if Sendak will be changing the last word in the book.  Says Nordstrom, “As you know, new plates are being made and before the new edition comes out we wonder if you want to change the last word from ‘hot’ to ‘warm.’  I can’t for the life of me remember the history of all this but I believe we heard from a couple of children (or their rotten parents) that ‘and it was still warm’ would be better than ‘and it was still hot’ because children don’t like hot foot [sic].  Listen, have you ever had such great editorial comment in your life?”  For some reason I like this little passage very very much, though “hot” is clearly the superior word.

Here is the 1983 CGI clip of the movie that was never made from this book:

• At one point I mention a great site called Terrible Yellow Eyes which solicited unique Wild Things art from a variety of different artists. It hasn’t been updated in years but it’s still out there for you to see.

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