In the Night Kitchen (Caldecott Collection) by Maurice Sendak Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
(Click here)
Book Reviews of In the Night Kitchen (Caldecott Collection)
Book Review: Can you recite this book by heart?
Summary: 5 Stars
When we got In the Night Kitchen for our girls, I thought they'd be frightened by a boy awakened by strangers in the kitchen. Silly me! They loved it! My husband and I could recite the whole book, which is a wonderfully rhythmic poem. Now I'm introducing it to my 2-year-old grandson. Soon he'll be joining in with "...QUIET DOWN THERE!" Great art and great writing. A satisfying read for the teddy bear set!Book Review: Strangely nightmarish journey which doesn't quite appeal
Summary: 3 Stars
My kids love two other of Sendak's books - Where the wild things Are (fabulously popular!) and outside over there (again popular with them but without the same enthusiasm) - but they just don't really like In the NIght Kitchen. It could be that I don't really like it and that has transferred to them, but they don't ever request it.
The book is beautifully illustrated - as all Sendak's works are, and the illustrations are both gorgeous and very clever - I love his city made of ingredients where each tall high rise is another type of ingredient.
Perhaps it is the nature of the story. It is a nightmare that the boy is having, I suspect it is anyway, but the surreal nature of the dream is both disconcerting and unpleasant.
In his dreams the little boy here's noise in the kitchen and shouts down be quiet - propelling him into the world of the night kitchen. There three cheerful cooks (as someone else pointed out all look like Oliver Hardy) mistake him for milk and mix him into a batter trying to cook him. He escapes and finds them milk - making some dough into a plane to do so.
The nightmarish qualities for me include the number of almost identical cooks, the baking of the boy into a batter and surreal nature of the escape. As with Sendak's other books the child always has the power at hand, but in this the child hero seems to be on the edge of being baked and I find that uncomfortable.
I was amused to find out this book has been banned because of the boys nakedness, he falls out of his pyjamas into the night kitchen. It seems a strange thing to ban a book for, it is hardly offensive and the boy is clearly very young.
Overall it is beautifully illustrated but it doesn't quite gel for more or my children as a kids book.
Book Review: Loose Bases on Psychology
Summary: 5 Stars
First there's Where The Wild Things are in which Max makes the most of being sent to his room without supper by fantasizing via turning his bedroom into a forest both of which he can walk through as well as where he can board a boat to sail away to an island where he get's to become king of the wild things as well as still learn his lesson that he misses his homelife and wants to return to it.While with In the Night Kitchen in which Mickey both falls into a dream state and out of his pajamas and then into a dough suit & out. It's more than just symbolic of the state that most little kids like to be in the most whether or not it has to do with the parents possibly promoting it as Betty Jones' Shame on you! review of June 29,2002 does show us too.Also who says that the cooks are necessarily looking at him as another reviewer had indicated may be the impression that it may give. Also remember this book's copyright is 1970 when things were different here in the USA.While in the UK these things seemingly are the same then as now.Whether or not it's in a dream many times when little kids are at home it's the state that they're often in as Betty Jone's review also shows us.Also with their parents present and even when they're having company & whether it may concist of other grown ups and whether or not bigger kids may be present. Mickey being mixed into the batter etc. may be even more than somewhat nightmarish but he escapes it before his awakening when most people escape it via an awakening from their nightmare. There's also a Bugs Bunny cartoon in which upon arriving in France Bugs teaches one Chef after another how to cook Rabbit Stew making each one out to be a rabbit,mixes them in a pan,& yes litterally cooks them in the oven too & upon completion they each sing alouette while sprinking themselves with spoons.There's also another cartoon in which Bugs first fakes that the police are coming,hides the crooks in the oven & turns on the gas & throws in a lit match & then when the cops really come & the enactment is rehashed up until when they won't allow him to throw the lit match into the oven again & then they give themselves up & it ends with Bugs as a private eye(ball) so in conclusion in this book as in those cartoons little kids wouldn't take the theme of being litterally cooked in the oven serious and they know that it's only fiction too.Next there is Outside Over There of which truly does concist of both a nightmarish sequence of a baby being kidnapped by goblins as well as little girls running bare. These in conclusion are most significant of the state of which most little kids just as much act in,dream in,and get scared in as well.It was a blatant redundacy for anyone to say "If God..." because obviously all children are born that way.It's a Biblical Saying performed by Preachers that we first enter naked & then we exit naked.As heard at the end of the movie,Being There,based on the book,It's Sunday and Chance is in the Garden.It was both 7 1/2 years since I had bought In the Night Kitchen as well as 4 1/2 years since this guy had faded from the scene before I was about to give it to him that I had finally opened up,read,and looked through that copy of In The Night Kitchen that I'd first found out about the contents inside of this book and before this I had known of how this guy had went to a costume party as the bull creature,while his date had went as Max and yes that's true she really did too.This was the result of why I'd given this guy a number of the Maurice Sendak books of which I'd given to him before I was about to give In the Night Kitchen to him. As for Maurice Sendak's use of child psychology in these three books I give him The Big Thumb's Suck.Next if Maurice Sendak makes it to his birthday in '08 then he'll have reached the age of 80 years old. Speaking of birthdays check out his latest release of which I'd seen online at a bookstore & why I know how old that Maurice Sendak is. Now how much may there be more to say? But Yes this God Bless Mr.S. By the way this book came up on the 3/31/06 episode of Jeopardy!in the category of Author"S". Book Review: Well, Mickey, this is another fine mess you've gotten yourself into.
Summary: 3 Stars
Sometimes my job as a children's librarian leads me to think one way or another about a book. For example, if I discover that a book has been banned by a school or public library somewhere, that same book acquires all sorts of interest that it might never have gotten before. "In the Night Kitchen" is one such book. Banned for the nudity of its main character this title has always been considered the second rung in Maurice Sendak's creative and artistic trio (the first being "Where the Wild Things Are" and the third "Outside Over There"). Fuddy-duddy adults everywhere are consistently and predictably shocked by Mickey, the young protagonist who prefers to experience his adventures au naturale. By all rights I should enjoy this book. It has everything going for it! It has been banned, it's by the greatest living children's author today, it is considered a classic, and some of the newest reissues of it are breathtakingly gorgeous. I mean, they just don't reprint books like this twenty-fifth anniversary edition no more. That said, it's probably my least favorite Sendak creation. Sad isn't it? Though I'll fight to the death to keep this book on library shelves everywhere, I must admit that I don't much like it myself. It all just comes down to individual taste.
One night, Mickey hears an awful racket and by a process of falling and clothing removal finds himself in cake batter. The cake batter is in a gigantic bowl tended by three cooks who each bear a striking resemblance to Oliver Hardy. Mistaking Mickey for milk (it could happen to anyone) they mix the batter up with him in it and pop it into the oven. The baking doesn't work though and Mickey, now clothed in a suit of cake batter, fashions a small bi-plane out of bread dough. With a jaunty measuring cup on his head, he flies up to the top of a gigantic bottle of milk into which he dives (thereby losing his clothes again). He then pours some milk down to the grateful chefs and a cake is baked. Then Mickey floats gently downward into his bed once more, "cakefree and dried". The moral of the story? "And that's why, thanks to Mickey we have cake every morning". The end.
So why don't I like it? I do in a way. This is Sendak at his detailed and wholly intricate best. The world of ingredients in which most of this story plays is almost as intriguing as the main story. I guess when you come right down to it, I've never much cared for this brand of surrealism. If something's surreal (like "The Red Book" by Barbara Lehman or "Who Needs Donuts?" by Mark Stamaty) then I need it to see it hold together in some way. "In the Night Kitchen" plays like an odd dream that a child might really have. A child that's watched too many Laurel and Hardy films, that is. I haven't a problem with the nudity. It's the whole baking into a cake aspect, I guess, that sets me off. That and the plot that isn't a plot. Though a tribute to Wildsor McKay's, "Little Nemo", I think I prefer the original itself. Actually, I did love how Sendak slips an oblique tip-of-the-hat to this master of the Sunday funny pages. It happens in a picture where Mickey glares from a bowl. He is being covered in ingredients and below him we see some sugar with tiny words on the label reading, "Chicken Little, Nemo". I'm no genius, but it doesn't take much to remove that comma and see the words, "Little Nemo" float before your eyes. Nicely done, Mr. S.
Of this book, its editor Ursula Nordstrom had this to say: "I think young children will always react with delight to such a book as 'In the Night Kitchen', and that they will react creatively and wholesomely. It is only adults who ever feel threatened by Sendak's work". She also says, "Should not those of us who stand between the creative artist and the child be very careful not to sift our reactions to such books through our own adult prejudices and neuroses?". We should indeed. A former college roommate once bemoaned to me the popularity of this book, citing her own childhood objections to its baking-kids ethic. It's hard to read a picture book and not find yourself weighed down by your own prejudices and hang-ups. Obviously, my friend objected to the book as a kid and that carried over into her adulthood whereas I met this book as an adult and was put off by it late in life. I would never prevent a child from reading it or hesitate to recommend it to someone who was already a fan of Sendak's work. I just don't care much for it personally, though I don't know how much weight that carries with you. This is a book that is going to get a different reaction out of every person who reads it. If you want a title that pleases everyone everywhere, look elsewhere. If, on the other hand, you want a highly original picture book for a creative kid who isn't squeamish in the least, "In the Night Kitchen" is the place to start. I didn't like it, but that isn't to say that someone else won't love it.
Book Review: Not Scary for a Toddler
Summary: 5 Stars
As a child, I LOVED this book (and a shoe box, but that's a different story!)! My parents have many many pictures of me starting at the age of two with this book! And in fact, this is the only book that I really remember from that far back. My daughter is now the age that I was when my parents took the first pictures of me with this book, and I have no problems sharing it with her!
I think issues in the story that some folks are thinking may be too scary are just really good ground for the imagination to grow in! As toddlers, children believe they can do anything--and imagining being baked into a cake or making an airplane out of dough doesn't seem unusual to them--especially when they ultimately end up saving the morning by bringing the milk to the bakers!