Maurice sendak where the monsters live read. Where the monsters live

A boy named Max, dressed up as a white wolf, is terrorizing him - as a joke, probably, or not? - your dog, chasing it with a fork; when his mother comes to talk some sense into him, he threatens to devour her too. She, angry, sends him to bed without dinner. The room turns into a forest, the sea and a yacht appear there, and Max sails away on it somewhere far, far away - to where the fear-shaped monsters live, ready - yes, great again - to devour him. Having hypnotized them, however, with his heavy gaze, Max becomes their king; having played enough with his new subjects, he begins to get bored and returns home, where he enjoys the usual comfort and coziness; the mother, apparently, had cooled down during this time - which cannot be said about the dinner that awaits the hero on the table.

"American Chukovsky" Maurice Sendak Photo: sirmitchell.com The man who created this strange fairy tale, where everyone is grotesquely preoccupied with digestive problems, was named Maurice Sendak; he was a writer and illustrator; after Monsters came out in 1963, he became in America something like Chukovsky in the USSR - and enjoyed this status for another half century. Several generations of children managed to grow up with “Monsters”; they tried to ban it, filmed it, transformed it into an opera and a play, translated it into all languages ​​of the world, parodied it in “The Simpsons”, sold it (a million, two, three... twenty, now probably thirty millions of copies) - and interpreted, interpreted, interpreted. Adults quickly realized that “Monsters” is a text “with a secret”, and, leaving children the opportunity to learn from the book ambiguous - and even more valuable - lessons about how life works, they undertook a hermeneutical assault unprecedented in the ratio of the amount of text and the volume of interpretations, comparable in scale to Hamlet and the Gospels. It turned out that in 338 words - some of Tolstoy’s phrases will be longer - as in a DNA spiral, almost the entire history of world culture is encrypted: from Blake’s “Songs of Innocence” to Stevenson’s “Jekyll and Hyde”, from Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” to Conrad’s “Heart” darkness”, from the Younger Edda... Well, it’s obvious that Max’s yacht is, in fact, the Naglfar ship, the same one that is made from the nails of the dead; not obvious?

Surreal - not very typical for children's books - graphics refer to William Hogarth and Picasso. A plot recognizable both from folklore and world literature: A story about (Kafkaesque) Transformation and Journey (into the heart of darkness), about Crime and Punishment, about Power and Submission, about Anger and Repentance, about Heroism and Adventure, about Savagery and Civilization, about the Return of the Prodigal Son - and about Forgiveness of the Mother, about Initiation and Fear. And this strange - not to say David Lynchian - boy-werewolf, entering into (Oedipal? “Mom-I-will-eat-you.” Eat? Oh. And where is the father? No answer) conflict with his domineering but loving mother ? Essentially, this is a story about a delayed meal - and you don’t need to be a first-class psychoanalyst to understand what kind of ritual may be implied.

Things are even worse with the (suspiciously gruffal-like; although The Gruffalo, of course, was created much later) fear-monsters: they seem to be scary, but at the same time comical; and most importantly, it is not clear what they are in essence - hesitant, sitting, so to speak, on the metaphysical fence separating Good and Evil; and the devil knows which side they decide to jump to. It is clear that they are unsophisticated and unsophisticated; and it is clearly no coincidence that they resemble the natives from books about the era of the Great Geographical Discoveries - ideal material for conquistadorization and colonization. However, thank God it’s not all the same with the “native” theme: it is known that Sendak drew fear images from his distant relatives, who used to come to his house, stroke him on the head, saying something like “You’re so lovely, you’ll lick your fingers” ; in the opera based on his fairy tale, Sendak directly named the monsters after his uncles and aunts - Tsyppy, Moishe, Aaron, etc. The irony is also that Max’s own appeal to fear images obviously repeats - and again parodies - the speech of his own mother, from whom he ran away (“Stop the fear images!” Max ordered. And he sent everyone to bed. Without dinner”): according to towards them he is mature, authoritative and civilized. So, there is reason to assume that we are also in some way the history of the West, which colonized the rest of the world, and then, by the 60s of the twentieth century, having cooled down a little, return to its own dinner and, if not repent, then calm down. Yes, such a story teaches something.

Teaches... puzzles... draws parallels... shocks with unexpected allusions... everything is so; It’s just not clear how this kind of book - even though it truly represents an original and whimsical artistic exploration of childhood phobias and the mechanisms by which our imagination copes with them - can actually become a favorite of any child? On a par with “Aibolit”, “Usatiy striped” and “Boltunya”? At least not for a child raised on Chukovsky, Marshak and Barto.

• Publishing house “Pink Giraffe”, Moscow, 2014, translation by E. Kanishcheva

In every family with children there live “fear images”). They lie in wait for you from behind the door, from the corner, from under the bed...
“That evening, Max dressed up as a wolf and staged a shurum-burum. And then burum-shurum. And my mother said: “Oh, you monster!” And Max said: “I am a fear image, and I will eat you!” And his mother sent him to bed. No dinner."
It seems that this situation is familiar to millions of parents in all corners of the world. A child who is so wild that he cannot stop. And a mother who does not want to tolerate disobedience and impoliteness. What will happen next? Therapy for adults: how to show restraint and patience in stressful situations? An instructive story for a child, how not to behave and what happens for it?
Maurice Sendak tells a very different story. In it, Max goes to a magical land inhabited by Fearimages of all sizes and stripes. There, the most courageous and fearless fear figure, of course, turns out to be a little boy. He has fun from the heart and is fearful. Until she gets bored and returns to her cozy home, where she smells of her mother’s pie. After all, not a single mother in the world will leave her child, even if it is the King of Fearforms, without dinner.
When this book, invented and drawn by Maurice Sendak, was first published, many parents, librarians and teachers were outraged: “On the very first pages, a child quarrels with his mother, and the author does not condemn him for his bad behavior!”
But the children fell in love with this book instantly. Probably for an honest conversation about the emotions that children experience. Yes, the children's world is sometimes populated by creepy fear images, and adults cannot and should not always control everything in it. Children need to learn to experience their strongest and most violent feelings themselves in order to cope with difficult life situations.
It wasn’t just children who loved the book “Where the Wild Things Are.” In 1964, a year after its publication, it received the prestigious Caldecott Medal for the best illustrated book for children. Many times, Sendak's story has been included in lists of the best children's books compiled by librarians, educators, school teachers and parents.
For artists, “Where the Wild Things Are” has become a standard for book illustration. Since its publication, the book has sold 19 million copies, been translated into 13 languages, and has been adapted into an opera and a feature-length film.
In Russia, Sendak's most famous book (as well as his other books) was never published. In 1988, the Russian translation of “Monsters” with one of the illustrations was published in the magazine “Funny Pictures”; in 1989 it was published in Estonia in Estonian. For “The Pink Giraffe,” the book “Where the Wild Things Are” was brilliantly translated by Evgenia Kanishcheva, one of the best translators of children’s literature.

The book is one of the best-selling books in the world (more than 19 million copies as of 2008), and has been translated into many languages. A cartoon was made based on it, an opera was staged, and in 2009 a full-length film was released, which was a great success.

The book was published in Russian translation at the end of 2014, after the death of the author and more than half a century after its original publication.

Story

Sendak began working on the book in 1955, eight years before its publication. However, in the draft version of the book, horses appeared instead of monsters, and the intended title was “Where the Horses Are” ( Where the Wild Horses Are). However, the publisher suggested that Sendak change these characters to some other “creatures”, since it turned out that the artist was not good at drawing horses. Pondering what the creatures might look like, Sendak recalled his childhood impressions of the many uncles and aunties who would pester him during visits to their homes and say, “You’re so cute, I’ll eat you now!” Later, when Sendak worked with composer Oliver Nussen on an opera based on the book, he gave the monsters the names of his relatives (Zippi, Moishe, Aaron, Emil and Bernard).

At first, after publication, the book was not allowed into libraries and was given negative reviews, primarily because of the explicit depiction of Max’s quarrel with his mother, which was not accepted in children’s literature of that time. It took about two years before librarians and teachers fully realized that children were eager to read this book and were constantly asking for it; soon the reviews of the book became more favorable. The book was also awarded the 1964 Caldecott Medal for Best Picture Book.

Plot

The main character of the book is a boy named Max, who plays at home dressed as a wolf. After several hooligan antics, his mother calls him a “monster” ( Wild Thing), and he tells her: “I’ll eat you!” Then his mother sends him to bed without dinner. In his room, Max imagines that there is a dense forest around him. Then he sails across the sea on a ship and finds himself in the Land of Monsters. The monsters that inhabit the country are frightening in appearance (huge in size, with fangs and horns), but Max conquers them because he can “look into their yellow eyes without blinking.” He becomes king over all the monsters and orders them to organize wild dances, in which he himself participates. However, he soon gets tired of it, and now he sends the monsters to bed without dinner. Max becomes lonely and he returns back on the ship, although the monsters ask him to stay and shout: “We will eat you, we love you so much!” Once in his room, Max finds dinner still hot on the table.

Artistic Features

Screen adaptations and productions

• In 1973, director Gene Deitch made the book into an animated short film, which featured Sendak's original illustrations, the book's text read by Allen Swift, and a music-concrete soundtrack composed by Deitch himself. In 1988, another version of the cartoon was released with new music and voice-over text performed by Peter Schickele.

Translations

Mentions in popular culture

Significant public performances

Notes

1. Thornton, Matthew “Wild Things All Over” (Publishers Weekly, February 4, 2008)
2. Warrick, Pamela. “Facing the Frightful Things,” Los Angeles Times (October 11, 1993).
3. Marcovitz, Hal. Maurice Sendak. (Who wrote that?) Infobase Publishing, 2006. ISBN 0-7910-8796-4
4. Wild Things: The Art of Maurice Sendak (undefined) . www.tfaoi.com (April 15 - August 14, 2005). Retrieved August 28, 2009. Archived September 17, 2012.
5. Brockes, Emma. Maurice Sendak: "I refuse to lie to children" , The Guardian(October 2, 2011). Retrieved October 5, 2011.
6. Interview in the video for publication:

Maurice Sendak

He illustrated the novel Little Bear by Harper Collins; in 1996, based on his illustrations, an animated series of the same name (39 episodes) was filmed in Canada. He appeared as an actor in the TV series “Angels in America” (). In 2009, the premiere of a film based on the fairy tale “Where the Wild Things Are” is planned.

Links

Other books on similar topics:

See also in other dictionaries:

- “Where the wild things are”: “Where the wild things are (book)” children's picture book by American writer and artist Maurice Sendak (1963) “Where the wild things are (cartoon) "animated film... ... Wikipedia

“That evening, Max dressed up as a wolf and made a shurum-burum. And then a burum-shurum. And mom said: “Oh, you monster!” And Max said: “I’m a fear image, and I’ll eat you!” And mom sent him to bed. Without dinner."
It seems that this situation is familiar to millions of parents in all corners of the world. A child who is so wild that he cannot stop. And a mother who does not want to tolerate disobedience and impoliteness. What will happen next? Therapy for adults: how to show restraint and patience in stressful situations? An instructive story for a child, how not to behave and what happens for it?
Maurice Sendak tells a very different story. In it, Max goes to a magical land inhabited by Fearimages of all sizes and stripes. There, the most courageous and fearless fear figure, of course, turns out to be a little boy. He has fun from the heart and is fearful. Until she gets bored and returns to her cozy home, where she smells of her mother’s pie. After all, not a single mother in the world will leave her child, even if it is the King of Fearforms, without dinner.
When this book, invented and drawn by Maurice Sendak, was first published, many parents, librarians and teachers were outraged: “On the very first pages, a child quarrels with his mother, and the author does not condemn him for his bad behavior!” But the children fell in love with this book instantly. Probably for an honest conversation about the emotions that children experience. Yes, the children's world is sometimes populated by creepy fear images, and adults cannot and should not always control everything in it. Children need to learn to experience their strongest and most violent feelings themselves in order to cope with difficult life situations.
It wasn’t just children who loved the book “Where the Wild Things Are.” In 1964, a year after its publication, it received the prestigious Caldecott Medal for the best illustrated book for children. Many times, Sendak's story has been included in lists of the best children's books compiled by librarians, educators, school teachers and parents. For artists, “Where the Wild Things Are” has become the standard for book illustration. Since its publication, the book has sold 19 million copies, been translated into 13 languages, and has been adapted into an opera and a feature-length film.
In Russia, Sendak's most famous book (as well as his other books) was never published. In 1988, the Russian translation of “Monsters” with one of the illustrations was published in the magazine “Funny Pictures”; in 1989 it was published in Estonia in Estonian. For The Pink Giraffe, the book Where the Wild Things Are was brilliantly translated by Evgenia Kanishcheva, one of the best translators of children's literature.
For primary school age.