I have not read the children's book `Where The Wild Things Are' by Maurice Sendak for about eight years since my sister was about three or four. It is a book that has always stayed with me though, it's a children's cult classic in a way. Though cult makes it sound like its doing bad things to children's brains and this book doesn't to my knowledge. When I saw David Eggers had written a `cross-over' version of the book I decided I would have a go at reading it. I was slightly dubious that this would be a cash cow as the movie, which Eggers is very much involved with, comes out very soon which is an amalgamation of the new book and the old.
The Wild Things is the tale of Max and an adventure he has after he runs away from home. His parents have divorced in the not too distant past and now he lives with his mother, his sister Claire and his mothers boyfriend (a toy boy) Gary. His mother is very busy with her career two children and a new partner. His sister is very busy ignoring him and becoming a woman, no longer with so much time for Max. His Dad doesn't really figure very much as he lives in the city. So this young boy is going through quite a bag of emotions culminating in a huge rebellion where he ends up running away and trying to sail to his fathers. He doesn't end up there instead he finds an island inhabited by some very strange beasts who he befriends and even becomes King of. Though Kings need to be able to have all the answers and if they don't, like young boys don't always, they might just get eaten.
Its an interesting book. For me as an adult I found it slightly flawed, the first half was utterly brilliant and very entertaining. Sadly once on the island no plot seemed abounds (maybe that is the idea) there also didnt seem to be any reasoning behind the monsters behaviour and yet I felt that Eggers was trying to teach children something. There is a war which goes out of hand but is left unresolved and by the end of the book I couldnt work out what it was trying to say and if in fact it was a book that tried to incorporate an old classic picture book with no real idea of why it was doing it other than a movie tie-in. Good fun to read to children, if you want them to run amock!
