In the night kitchen

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In the Night Kitchen
Maurice Sendak , 1970
Indian ink and watercolor on paper
Rosenbach Museum & Library , Philadelphia

Link to the picture
(please note copyrights )

In der Nachtküche is the German title of the picture book In the Night Kitchen by the American illustrator and children's book author Maurice Sendak , published by Harper & Row in 1970. The hero of the book is a boy named Micky, who in a dream goes on a surreal journey through a kitchen at night and helps three bakers prepare a cake. In the night kitchen counts Where the Wild Things Are among the most popular books Sendak.

action

Micky (in the original: Mickey ) is a little boy; about three years old in appearance. Micky is sleeping in his bed when he wakes up from the "noise of the night". His calls for "Quiet down there!" Are not fruitful. Suddenly Mickey begins to float and flies "... through the darkness [...] and out of his clothes", pulls "past [...] to dad and mom" and falls naked through the floor into a surreal world of giant baking ingredients lit by the full moon, which are also skyscrapers with illuminated windows ("... into the glow of the night kitchen"). Micky lands in a large bowl of cake batter under the eyes of three identical-looking, laughing bakers. The three fat bakers wear aprons and hats. With their bulbous noses, “ Chaplin mustaches ” and their body size , they look very similar to Oliver Hardy in his role in Dick and Doof .

The three constantly smiling bakers add flour, baking powder and eggs "to mix Mickey into cake batter"; they pour some of the ingredients directly onto Mickey's head, which gradually goes down in the bowl. While the bakers are stirring the cake batter and singing their "Milk in the batter!" Song, Micky only has one hand sticking out of the batter. The bakers - who either don't notice Micky or consciously ignore him - put the dough and Mickey in a deep baking tray. You push the tray into the oven, which is marked with a sign as "Mickey-Oven". Smoke, steam and a sweet smell are already rising, then Micky breaks through the dough and climbs out of the cake pan under protest. He is Mickey, and not the missing baking ingredient: “I am not milk and milk is not me. I'm Mickey! "

Mickey, who stepped out of the dough, is no longer naked, but wears an overalls made of cake dough. He jumps into the rising cake batter, “shaped and pulled” a propeller plane from it, starts the engine and flies “up and away” in the open monoplane. The three bakers demand from Micky “Milk! Milk! Milk for the cake batter! ”And vehemently wave a measuring cup and mixing spoon. Micky accepts the order, grabs the measuring cup as a pilot's helmet, and is now “on the way to get milk the Mickey way”, whereupon the cooks look visibly more relaxed. In the original, the pun Mickey way / milky way ( Milky Way ) appears here for the first time , over which Micky now climbs by flying "up and up" to the neck of a gigantic milk bottle. The following double page is occupied by a single large picture and is the only one in the book that does not have a single speech bubble. This speechlessness corresponds to the image of the three bakers, whose half astonished, half worried looks follow Mickey in his plane in the long shot as he reaches the zenith of his trajectory above the opening of the milk bottle.

Micky gets out of the pilot's seat above the bottle opening and jumps into the bottle. His dough overalls dissolve again in the milk, and he takes off the measuring cup helmet to return it to its original purpose. While floating in the milk, Micky sings the nursery rhyme "I'm in the milk and the milk is in me, / God keep the milk and protect me!", Naked Micky now swims up and pours milk out of the bottle with the measuring cup down into the bowl with the cake batter. The happily smiling bakers stir the dough - now with all the ingredients - again and finish baking it. The following double page shows the three bakers as a musical group in the medium long shot : a funnel serves as a megaphone , a large mixing spoon as a banjo and a small mixing spoon as a baton. The bakers repeat their song “Milk in the dough!”, This time with a positive outcome: “I tried it / Nothing happened!” Micky crows happily and slides down the outside of the bottle to magically return to his room land: "... jumped into his bed, was dry, slept". On the last page you can see Mickey in his dough overalls with a bottle of milk on his shoulder. Under the vignette it says: "And that's why, thanks to Mickey, there is cake every morning."

Design and influences

Graphic design

The graphic design of the night kitchen deviates significantly from the Wilder Kerlen (1963). Together with Als Papa fort war ( Outside over there , 1984) these three books form a Sendak trilogy on the “state of childhood”, in which a cathartic expression of feelings is made possible through fantasy . The Wilden Kerle are stylistically close to the copper engraving of the 19th century due to the use of hatching in a few colors . Outside over there is committed to painting from an earlier time. The night kitchen with its clear influences from comics , film and architecture of the Roaring Twenties , on the other hand, is in the middle of the 20th century.

While full or double-sided images predominate with the Wilder Kerlen and the text at the bottom of the page forms a caption, in the night kitchen page divisions with panels are more common and the text is in speech bubbles . Sendak uses the stylistic device of the scenic sequence of stop-motion images ( continuous narration ) several times by dividing a page or double page into several panels, each with the same background, in which the protagonist is shown at progressive points in time. Examples of this are Micky waking up from bed and the following fall as well as Micky as a pilot in the dough plane during his soaring flight over the milk bottle.

Sendak created the desired gradations of color and brightness in the Wilder Kerlen using hatching , which is completely absent in the night kitchen . Instead, the dreamlike, sometimes threatening character of the surroundings is achieved through dark and impasto tones. Selma G. Lanes sees Sendak's illustration of Lullabies and Night Songs (1965) as the direct forerunner of the graphic design of the night kitchen in Sendak's oeuvre. In the design, the "line instead of the modeled surface" predominates; this creates a “ two-dimensional comic book style”.

text

The night kitchen contains little text; in the American original there are around 320 words on 40 pages; in the German version there are about 290 words. That does not mean that Sendak neglected the language design. On the contrary: Especially when there is a shortage, a successful text can only be created through intensive work. Sendak's text is particularly suitable for reading aloud; Children learn it by heart quickly. In the 1970s, Halbey carried out studies of the understanding of text by preschool children for several years using the night kitchen . Sendak's verses are simple and at the same time profound, logical and at the same time surprising. In it, the text achieves a quality that is characteristic of the classic Mother Goose rhymes, to which Sendak also refers directly: Micky's exclamation I'm in the milk, and the milk's in me./ God bless milk and varies God bless me! the old English nursery rhyme I see the moon / And the moon sees me; / God bless the moon, and God bless me.

The translation of the text from the night kitchen into German was carried out in 1971 by Hans Manz , a Swiss elementary school teacher, children's book author and poet. Between 1969 and 1971 Manz translated three more Sendak books for Diogenes Verlag : Hans and Heinz , Hector Protector and the Nutshell Library , but he cannot be called a permanent Sendak translator. For example, Die Wilden Kerle was broadcast by Claudia Schmölders in 1967 , and the Seven Little Giants in 1977 by Diogenes editor Gerd Haffmans .

Role models and influences

The drawing style of the night kitchen is similar to the comic Little Nemo (early 20th century) by Winsor McCay , to which the plot structure - dream sequence ending in a safe bed - is similar. In one panel there is a direct allusion to the model Little Nemo : the sugar bowl from the fantasy brand “Hosmer's” has the place of manufacture “Chicken Little, Nemo Mass” printed on it. Sendak himself described the night kitchen in 1987 as an homage to Winsor McCay.

“McCay and I served the same master, our child selves. We both draw not on the literal memory of childhood but on the emotional memory of its stress and urgency. And neither of us forgot our childhood dreams. "

- Maurice Sendak : Caldecott & Co (1988)

The surreal quality of the after-kitchen emerges - in addition to the "cloned bakers" and the action-as-dream sequence - essentially from the design of the background, i.e. the actual kitchen. Baking ingredients, baking equipment and kitchen furniture are all too big - Mickey is z. B. towered over by a flour bag several times - and much too small, since Mickey is half the size of a skyscraper . The backdrop is thus formed from kitchen appliances and baking ingredients, which are also buildings of a New York skyline from the 1930s, a tribute to Sendak's own childhood: a glass of beans becomes a skyscraper with lighted windows and a carton of milk becomes a giant advertising poster - of course for milk - while loaves of bread in their baking tins mutate into subway cars on the tracks of an elevated railway line called Bread .

Sendak cited a “ Proustian ” event from his childhood as a direct inspiration for the bakers in the night kitchen . When he was eleven years old, his sister Natalie often had to take care of him. Natalie - already in her teenage age - visited the New York World's Fair in 1939 with her boyfriend and little brother Maurice . There Natalie lost (or left?) Him in front of the Sunshine Bakers booth . In an interview with the curator of a Sendak exhibition ( Too Many Thoughts to Chew , Rosenbach Museum 2009) Sendak described himself not as frightened or alone, but as "captivated by the aroma of cookies and cakes, flour and milk". He had the "little bakers on the balcony [of the exhibition stand] waved" by the Lilliputians were represented, and was impressed by the life-size crackers been.

Sendak cites the film Gold Diggers of 1935 (Warner Bros., 1935) as further influences for the night kitchen . Sendak was born in 1928 and at the age of six accompanied his mother to the cinema once a week for dish night . ( Dish night was a marketing campaign by movie theaters that was widespread during the Depression : one evening a week, every female cinema-goer without a gentleman - children didn't count - received a piece of crockery as a giveaway .) This is how Sendak saw Gold Diggers , a musical film for Adults, at an easily impressionable age. Possible parallels to the night kitchen are the Milk Fund , for which Mrs. Prentiss is organizing a charity show, but above all the film-within-a-film sequence Lullaby of Broadway , in which Broadway baby Wini Shaw , who sleeps during the day and has fun at night, is one makes a nocturnal journey through a dream New York. The role of Mickey as a milkman comes straight from the line Milkman's on his way, good night baby, let's call it a day from the film music Lullaby of Broadway .

Sendak and his work

In the background of the scene in which Micky starts his propeller plane, there is a packet of coconut flakes . It says in small print : Patented June 10th 1928 . June 10, 1928 is Maurice Sendak's date of birth. The night kitchen contains a multitude of such autobiographical references, sometimes open and easy to read, sometimes only understandable for insiders . Other biographical motifs of the night kitchen may not have been consciously set by Sendak, but for performers they arise from the overall view of his life and work. The following is a brief account of Sendak's origins and life, insofar as they are relevant for understanding and interpreting the night kitchen .

Maurice Sendak was born in Brooklyn to Jewish immigrants . His parents - Philip and Sadie Sendak - came from Zembrova , a small shtetl near Białystok . His paternal grandfather was a wealthy timber merchant, and his maternal grandfather was a poor rabbi . Both parents emigrated to the United States shortly before the outbreak of World War I and were married there two years later. Maurice was the youngest of three children, his brother Jack was five years older and his sister Natalie was nine. Considered a beauty, Natalie was admired by Maurice and Jack, who dedicated a shared illustrated story to her in 1934, titled They Were Inseparable . Her father Philip Sendak , who had a romantic streak, told the children improvised bedtime stories full of unearthly beings and overcome mortal danger that stretched over several evenings.

Maurice Sendak later remembered his childhood as a "series of diseases". When he was two and a half years old, he had measles and was bedridden for thirteen weeks because of two severe pneumonia in a row . When he was five years old, he had scarlet fever , a highly dangerous disease before penicillin was discovered . One of Maurice Sendak's earliest memories was an overheard conversation in which relatives talked about his possible death from illness. His status as a sickly child and his introversion led to a childhood as an outsider who only watched the other children play through the window pane. In addition, at the urging of the mother, the family moved within Brooklyn every three years, so that school and playmates kept changing. Maurice read a lot, books and comics indiscriminately. The hero of his childhood was Mickey Mouse . Maurice attended Lafayette High School in Brooklyn. He was not a good student and had few friends; he only enjoyed art classes. In 1941 - on the day of 13-year-old Maurice's Bar Mitzvah - his father received a letter informing him of the death of his own father (Sendak's grandfather). Maurice Sendak remembers his Bar Mitzvah as a day full of “happiness and bitterness”. Other members of Sendak's family were also murdered in the course of the Holocaust . Another experience of loss was the death of his sister Natalie's fiancé, who died as an American soldier in the Pacific War .

After graduating from high school in 1946, Maurice Sendak tried unsuccessfully to gain a foothold as an artist. An attempt made in 1948 together with his brother Jack to start manufacturing children's toys failed because production costs were too high. However, the buyers at the FAO Schwarz toy department store were so impressed with his imaginative designs that Maurice Sendak got a job as an assistant to the window designer . For the next three years he worked daytime at FAO Schwarz, and attended some evening classes in oil painting , drawing from models and composition at the Art Students League of New York . Essentially, however, Sendak formed self-taught through reading and visiting museums. He counted among his models the British illustrators George Cruikshank and Randolph Caldecott from the 19th century, whose books he got to know in the children's book department of FAO Schwarz. There he learned in 1950, the chief editor of children's books the publisher Harper and Brothers , Ursula Nordstrom , who gave the Sendak its first order; the illustration of a book by Marcel Aymé . Nordstrom mentored Sendak for the next ten years and encouraged him in many ways.

Sendak had his first major success in 1952 with the third book he illustrated for Harper , A Hole is to Dig by Ruth Krauss . The children's book author Krauss and her husband, the illustrator Crockett Johnson , became Sendak's further mentors. Starting with A Hole is to Dig , Sendak was able to make a living from his art, quit FAO Schwarz and moved into his own apartment in Greenwich Village . By 1962 he illustrated fifty books, including his own works such as the classic Nutshell Library . The Wilder Kerle followed in 1963 , establishing Sendak's status as one of the most important authors and illustrators of children's literature of the 20th century. In 1964, the American Library Association awarded the book the Caldecott Medal , which is considered the most important children's book award in the United States. Higglety Pigglety Pop followed in 1967 ! .

History of origin

The two and a half years between 1967 and 1970, in which Sendak created the night kitchen , were for him the "worst time of his life" to date. In 1967 Sendak suffered a serious heart attack while on a reading tour through Europe and had to go to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Gateshead in northern England for some time . During Sendak's absence, his beloved Sealyham Terrier Jennie became so ill at home that after Sendak's return, his partner Eugene Glynn had to take the dog to Bay Shore , LI for euthanasia . A little later Sendak learned that his mother Sadie was terminally ill with cancer . In 1968 his mother died, and his father Philip was also diagnosed with incurable cancer. Sendak wrote in a letter to a friend how he - just 40 years old - would soon be an orphan . In 1970 his father also died. In those "days of no consolation and full of depression," Sendak was still productive. In 1970, not only did the night kitchen appear , but Sendak was awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Prize , which is considered the “Little Nobel Prize” for children's literature.

Sendak had pursued the idea for some time, a number of traditional nursery rhymes ( English "nursery rhymes" together) and to illustrate. At the beginning of 1969 he put together a selection of his favorite Mother Goose rhymes and made his first sketches. Subconsciously, however, he had chosen a lot of rhymes that had to do with food and cooking - but he did not want to write a cookbook. However, two of the selected Mother Goose rhymes formed the first germ of the night kitchen : The verse “I see the moon / and the moon sees me / God bless the moon / and God bless me.” Became the starting point for Micky's self-assertion: “ I'm in the milk, and the milk's in me. / God bless milk and God bless me! ", While the verse" Blow, wind, blow / And go, mill, go! / That the miller may grind his corn; / That the baker may take it; / And into bread make it, / And bring us a loaf in the morn. ”Contains the germ of the plot - night bakery to bread in the morning. Sendak's sketches for the illustration of this rhyme already show a little boy who gets out of bed at night and interferes in the baking - albeit with only one baker as an opponent, who, however, already looked similar to the later trio.

After the first sketches and ideas for action, Sendak wrote the complete text on the night kitchen in the spring of 1969 , his usual procedure for his own works. He wrote to a friend: "I have written a new picture book text, and I'm mad for it, and it's mad. I feel so sure of it, something not common for me. It comes from the direct middle of me and it hurt like hell extracting it. ”He spent the summer of 1969 in Europe, and from September 1969 he started to work on the illustrations. A diary entry from the time reads: “Style very simple a la Meggendorfer , series of moving panels […] Spreads must vary in exciting fashion - like a film. Almost! ”At the beginning Sendak was still struggling with technical problems of the plot: for example, his first draft of the milk bottle had a door at the bottom of the bottle through which Mickey stepped out and at the same time let a gush of milk into the dough. But how should he elegantly close the door again? After Sendak had found satisfactory answers to these questions, he devoted himself more and more to the layout of the panels, the cinematic movement of the figures and the Art Deco-like decoration of the buildings. Distributed in the pictures, he made many allusions to friends, events and influences. In 1970 the book was ready. Drafts, sketchbooks, diary entries and correspondence can be found in the Rosenbach Museum and make the development traceable.

interpretation

The night kitchen was interpreted in many ways: by literary critics and reviewers after the book was published and - at a greater distance - in the context of several monographs on Sendak's complete works, each with a separate chapter on the night kitchen . Articles in trade journals added special aspects to the picture. Sendak himself speaks from the reviews of literary critics and scholars, pedagogues and psychoanalysts who dealt with the night kitchen , who largely determines the interpretation of the night kitchen through statements in interviews, essays and forewords . There are four main points of view in interpreting the night kitchen :

  • the biographical point of view focuses on Sendak himself, and seeks motifs of the writing and allusions from the text in his life,
  • the developmental psychological view focuses on the reading child, his or her basic needs and the way he or she takes on the work,
  • the psychoanalytic interpretation tries to make motives from the subconscious visible,
  • the interpretation from a Jewish perspective looks for points of contact in the rite and culture of the Jewish immigrants.

These points of view are not mutually exclusive, they are partly mutually dependent. Without Sendak's Jewish family background - a biographical motif - the interpretation from a Jewish perspective would be inconceivable. Depending on the performer, sometimes one point of view prevails, sometimes the other. Only the psychoanalytic interpretation is rejected entirely by some interpreters.

Developmental perspective

The developmental psychological interpretation sees the night kitchen as a story of the emancipation of the child. The event is interpreted as a dream in which the child appropriates the night. The night, with its darkness, strange noises and strange figures, stands for something terrifying as well as something tempting that is unjustly reserved for adults alone. The child sleeps in the familiar children's room, which both protects and narrows. The initial situation is thus a symbol for childhood itself, with its rules set by adults. The child protagonist - Micky - leaves this narrow world of his own volition and takes on the challenge that he masters thanks to courage and creativity - building and first flight of the dough plane. If Micky is initially ignored by the adults - the three bakers - at best, if not threatened, he achieves acceptance through active participation in the work in the kitchen - bringing in the missing milk.

The demarcation of the child from the adult world with its rules and commands is a recurring theme in Sendak's works. The child protagonist - be it Max from the Wilder Kerlen , Micky from the night kitchen or the hero from As I went over the water - is angry with adults or at least alone, turns away from reality and goes - flying or sailing - on a lonely journey through strange worlds in which the hero proves himself and which transforms him. In the end, he comes back to the adult world of his own free will. There, instead of being punished, he receives reward and recognition.

The topics of challenge, test of courage and probation are as old as fairy tales and legends. The direct recognition of the child's dream, its “reality and urgency, as important as the reality of the waking state”, which culminated in the “maiden flight over the Milky Way”, was new in 1970. Selma G. Lanes described this dream portrayal as a pioneering achievement in the genre of literature for young children.

Psychoanalytic Interpretation

The psychoanalytic interpretation is controversial: If some consider it a deep analysis of the reasons for the success story of the night kitchen with children and parents at the same time, others consider it a hopeless overinterpretation. Among the critics who look for and find hidden signs of the repressed - mostly sexual - in the book, two groups meet that otherwise have little in common: followers of a psychoanalytic view of childhood according to Freud and Lacan , who affirm an awareness of the unconscious, and Defender of a conventional view of what children (and their parents) need to be protected from in children's literature. Both groups agree that indications of u. a. Watching parental sexuality, masturbation , cannibalism , passage through the cervix and a bath in breast milk . The first group affirms such content, the second rejects it. A third group sees this form of interpretation as far-fetched.

Whether or not Sendak was influenced by psychoanalysis in the conscious and unconscious creation of the book , he lived with a psychoanalyst for 50 years and was well aware of Sigmund Freud's ideas and their application to his works. In an interview Sendak linked the picture of Mickey flying naked "as a reminder of how we were carried by our mothers" in connection with Freud, and described the dream of flying as "the first sexual dream children have , especially boys ”.

An example of a different interpretation is the construction of the propeller plane from dough. On the last panel of the double page, Micky pulls a propeller blade upwards with both hands while he clasps the dough with his legs. ("... stretched and bent it / shaped and pulled it.") The art historian Ellen Handler Spitz saw it in 2000 as a "masturbatory gesture". John Cech rejected this long-known interpretation in 1995, which would "destroy the metaphorical ambiguity of Sendak's narrative assumptions". Instead of early childhood masturbation, the formation of the dough plane shows the “archetypal child in the process of creation” as a symbol of human abilities. Even the professor of aesthetic philosophy Thomas Leddy cannot agree with Spitz's interpretation. Maurice Sendak said in an interview - albeit without direct reference to the masturbation interpretation - that he developed his stories without thinking about the graphic implementation in order to avoid seduction through graphic possibilities at the expense of a coherent plot. He also got hold of the airplane in the night kitchen , which was necessary for the plot, although Sendak was very difficult to draw airplanes. The formation of the airplane from dough was a way out of his dilemma , because "[...] a lousy airplane that looks like a dough airplane you can get away with".

Jewish perspective

Even if Sendak is not a practicing Jew, his work is counted among the “second generation” of Jewish-American culture . Sendak's career began with illustrations for books such as Good Shabbos, Everybody (1951) and Happy Hanukah, Everybody (1955), both for the United Synagogue Commission on Jewish Education . In 1955 he also illustrated Seven Little Stories on Big Subjects , published by the Anti-Defamation League . The literary critic Selma G. Lanes already saw in Sendak's first steps - regardless of the Jewish theme - the “warm and at the same time claustrophobic aura of the Jewish immigrant family”, which atmospherically would continue in his later works.

Sendak's family members - including grandparents, uncles and aunts - who remained in Europe were almost without exception murdered in the course of the Holocaust . The loss of his relatives and the downfall of the shtetl , not experienced personally, but internalized through the stories of his family, is seen by many literary critics as a strong driving force and also a motive in Sendak's work.

Reception history

After it was released, the night kitchen was largely received positively in the United States. Even if the sales success never came close to the spectacular editions of the Wilder Kerle and the Nutshell Library , the night kitchen can also be more than impressive commercially compared to other successful children's books of the time. The critics focused their reviews above all on the thematic and stylistic comparison to the wild guys , with the stylistic break in Sendak's work - comic-like, no more hatching, more McKay than Caldecott, more Mickey Mouse than Little Nemo - the focus. Depending on the reviewer's opinion on the subject of “Comics as high culture ”, this change was either welcomed or rejected. In the very first discussions, the topic of frontal nudity was mentioned rather casually, the uproar over allegations of censorship and freedom of libraries developed slowly.

The reviewer George A. Woods , editor for children's and youth literature at the New York Times , praised the dreamlike and yet real quality of the book: “Sendak has given the dream substance by means of a staffage of reality, just as he did in the "Wild guys" has already done [...] There are wonderful transformations here too. "Woods notes the absence of Sendak's previous stylistic devices: careful hatching, shading, a feeling of being enclosed - none of that is there anymore. Instead, the characters "explode from the pages." The book develops in the reader the feeling of watching a film whose "camera work with a dolly drives in and out". All in all, Sendak has succeeded in creating an “archetype of comics” in the McKay tradition, which takes comics in a new, better direction. Sendak's talent only grew from this change of direction.

Shortly after the Night Kitchen appeared, the Washington Post published an extensive interview with Sendak conducted by Meryle Secrest , who specialized in artist interviews and biographies. In the introduction she quoted the chairman of the Children's Book Council in New York, who gave Sendak "an attraction like few children's book authors and a very special audience". Secrest saw in the night kitchen - as in Sendak's previous works - a successful attempt to confront those pages of childhood that are “smothered under a blanket of reason” in other children's books: children who say “no” are arbitrarily, gleefully , contradicting and moody. In an interview, Sendak emphasized his full concentration on the night kitchen in the two years before the publication, talked about his recurring depression and the effect of the severe heart attack on his life:

"I have just finished two years of work on In the Night Kitchen with no major interference. Everything I read and almost everything I did in that time had in some way to do with what I was doing. Yet I doubt whether there are more than 350-odd words in the book. […] I'm finding my work more interesting than ever. But it doesn't stop me from being chronically depressed. [...] I've learned to conserve my energies. You mustn't fritter your time away doing things you're not vitally interested in. It's too valuable. "

- Maurice Sendak : November 1970

Paul Heins, National Book Award juror and editor of the influential Horn Book Magazine , praised the night kitchen in his magazine, and called the book a "work of art [...] with elements of the subconscious" which "complicated and deepened" the narrative and visual implementation . Heins did not mention Micky's nudity in his review "embarrassed", although this was already an obviously controversial topic at the time of his review.

The night kitchen has been translated into numerous other languages.

Honourings and prices

  • 1970: inclusion on the list Best Books of 1970 the School Library Journal . The annual list includes around 50 books each.
  • 1970: Listed on the New York Times Best Illustrated Children's Books list, listing ten books a year.
  • 1970: inclusion in the annual list of Notable Children's Books of the American Library Association (ALA).
  • 1971: ALA's Caldecott Honor , along with two other books.
  • 1971: As publisher of In the Night Kitchen , Harper & Row was nominated for the Carey-Thomas Award for Creative Publishing by Publishers Weekly .

Nudity and Censorship in the United States

The issue of the permissibility and censorship of nudity in children's books has determined a large part of the public perception of the book in the USA since the Night Kitchen was published in 1970. In discussions of the complete Sendak works or in Sendak interviews, the word controversial is usually used when the night kitchen is mentioned . Outside the USA, however, this topic does not play a role in the reception area of ​​the night kitchen .

A year before the Night Kitchen was released, The Light Princess was based on the art fairy tale by George MacDonald, with illustrations by Sendak. For the first time in Sendak's books, a naked child with recognizable sex organs was seen, in which the princess - lighter than air, "no more child and not yet a girl" - floats naked past the queen's window. The nudity, described by Americans as frontal nudity, did not cause any problems: In contrast to the nudity of Micky, a boy.

When entering (or better: flying over) the night kitchen, Micky loses his pajamas and from then on is naked for a large part of the plot. American critics of a too revealing representation of the human anatomy were disturbed by the representation of the penis and testicles of a child. In 1971 a staff member at the library of Caldwell Parish , Louisiana solved the "problem" by painting over the disputed body parts with diapers made of tempera . After a public appeal against this type of censorship, signed by more than 400 librarians, professors, and publishers, the American Library Association (ALA) incorporated the ban on the expurgation of literary works (partial cover, erasure , modification) into its charter in 1972 Library Bill of Rights on. Because of the ongoing controversy and the exclusion from some children's libraries and teaching programs in elementary schools, the ALA placed the book at number 25 of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of the decade in 2000 . The night kitchen was also on the list in the following decade, 2000–2009 , with an almost unchanged ranking.

The journalist Scott Timberg wrote in a Sendak retrospective in the Los Angeles Times in 2009 on the controversy over the nudity of a boy in the night kitchen : "If it had been known at the time that Sendak was gay, the controversy could easily have turned out to be disastrous." Sendak, whose childlessness has long been a topic in interviews and articles, which is remarkable for a children's author, first mentioned in 2008 that he was gay and had lived with the psychoanalyst Eugene Glynn from 1957 until his death in 2007. He never told his parents this: “All I wanted was to be straight so my parents could be happy. They never, never, never knew. ”A coming out would also have damaged the career of a children's book author in the 1950s and 1960s. Sendak's coming out almost 40 years after the beginning of the night kitchen controversy could not override the topic, Mickey's nudity had meanwhile become a symbol of freedom of expression and independence of libraries in the selection of their collections.

Adaptations and artistic processing

Gene Deitch filmed Wilde Kerle in 1973 in an animation style that stayed very close to the original. Even in the night kitchen was filmed in 1987 by Deitch as an animation. The film adaptation of the night kitchen has a running time of six minutes and was set to music by Peter Schickele with his own composition and sound effects. Schickele also acts as a narrator. In the review in Horn Book Magazine , John Cech praised the harmony between book and film, and the sound effects were also appropriate. Schickele's speaking voice is, however, too much of a "singing up and down" ( English "too sing-songy" ), which overemphasizes the rhythm of Sendak's text. All in all, the film succeeds in transporting “Sendak's vision with deep respect and care” into a new medium.

The poet Rita Dove in 1989 published a poem entitled "After Reading Mickey in the Night Kitchen for the Third Time Before Bed", which has since in a number of anthologies of African-American and feminist was included poetry. The poem describes an encounter between the author and her three-year-old daughter, who differ in skin color. (“Black mother, cream child”) After the protagonist has read the night kitchen to her daughter three times , she looks at her own vagina and wants to compare that of her mother. The child discovers that both have the same skin color inside and calls out: “We're pink!” The poem quotes - indented and directly below the title line - Micky's exclamation after the dive in the milk bottle: “I'm in the milk and the milk's in me… I'm Mickey ”. Dove takes up this life- and identity-affirming theme from the night kitchen in the last stanza and connects it in the closing lines “That we're in the pink / and the pink's in us” with her daughter's exclamation. (The phrase in the pink means to be completely healthy.)

In 1990 - for the twentieth anniversary of the publication of the night kitchen - Maurice Sendak developed the idea of ​​a children's theater called Night Kitchen together with friend Arthur Yorinks, a children's author , which they presented to the public in 1992. Sendak and Yorinks had met in 1970 while Sendak was finishing the night kitchen . The logo of the theater with the official name Night Kitchen - A National Children's Theater accordingly formed a smiling Mickey against the background of the starry sky. The Night Kitchen Theater did not have its own venue, but was supposed to stage its productions in the theaters and operas of New York and New England. The theater premiered in 1993 with the musical Really Rosie by Maurice Sendak, music by Carole King .

literature

Primary literature

Editions of "In the night kitchen"

  • Maurice Sendak: In the night kitchen . Harper & Row, New York 1970, LCCN  70-105483 . (First edition)
  • Maurice Sendak: In the night kitchen . Bodley Head, London 1971, ISBN 0-370-01549-5 . (British first edition)
  • Maurice Sendak: In the night kitchen . HarperCollins, New York 1996, ISBN 0-06-026668-6 . (Current American hardcover edition)
  • Maurice Sendak: In the night kitchen. from the American by Hans Manz. Diogenes-Verlag, Zurich 1971, ISBN 3-257-00537-7 . (German-language first edition, since then two new editions.)

Publications by Maurice Sendak

  • Virginia Haviland: Questions to an Artist Who Is Also an Author. In: Virginia Haviland (Ed.): The Openhearted Audience: Ten Authors Talk about Writing for Children . Library of Congress, Washington DC 1980, ISBN 0-8444-0288-5 . (Interview with Maurice Sendak)
  • Spike Jonze , Lance Bangs: Tell Them Anything You Want: A Portrait of Maurice Sendak . Documentary, 40 minutes. First broadcast on HBO on October 14, 2009 ( Oscar shortlist in the documentary short film category .)
  • Maurice Sendak: Caldecott & Co: Notes on Books & Pictures . Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York 1988, ISBN 0-374-22598-2 .

Secondary literature

Monographs

Essays

  • Rebecca V. Adams, Eric S. Rabkin: Psyche and Society in Sendak's "In the Night Kitchen". In: Children's Literature in Education. Vol. 38, No. 4, December 2007, pp. 233-241, doi: 10.1007 / s10583-006-9034-0 .
  • Kara Keeling, Scott Pollard: Power, Food, and Eating in Maurice Sendak and Henrik Drescher: "Where the Wild Thing Are", "In the Night Kitchen" and "The Boy who Ate Around". In: Children's Literature in Education. Vol. 30, No. 2, June 1999, pp. 127-143, doi: 10.1023 / A: 1022418319546 .
  • Thomas Leddy: Aesthetics and Children's Picture Books. In: Journal of Aesthetic Education. Vol. 36, No. 4, Winter 2002, ISSN  0021-8510 , pp. 43-54.
  • Averil Swanton: Maurice Sendak's picture books. In: Children's Literature in Education. Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 38-48, doi: 10.1007 / BF01355617 .
  • Jill P. May: Sendak's American Hero. In: Journal of Popular Culture. Vol. 12, 1978, pp. 30-35, doi: 10.1111 / j.0022-3840.1978.00030.x .
  • Jill P. May: Envisioning the Jewish Community in Children's Literature: Maurice Sendak and Isaac Singer. In: The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association. Vol. 33/34, Vol. 33, No. 3, Autumn 2000 - Vol. 34, No. 1, Winter 2001, pp. 137-151.
  • Jean Perrot: Maurice Sendak's Ritual Cooking of the Child in Three Tableaux: The Moon, Mother, and Music. In: Children's Literature. Vol. 18, 1990, ISSN  0092-8208 , pp. 68-86.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Maurice Sendak: In the night kitchen . Diogenes, Zurich 1971, pp. 6-7. ( English "Did you ever hear of Mickey / how he heard a racket in the night / and Shouted" Quiet down there "." )
    The German Diogenes issue is how the American HarperCollins edition nor paginated . The page numbers from the night kitchen in this and the following footnotes follow the pagination used by Halbey. (Hans Adolf Halbey: Bilderbuch: Literatur , Weinheim 1997, p. 78.): The ocher-colored endpaper and the first white, blank page remain without pagination. The medallion with the title and Micky, who is holding the milk bottle in his arm, is on p. 1, followed by a double page with the title and Micky on the plane on p. 2–3 and then on p. 4–5 a double page with the Imprint on the left and the dedication on the right. The plot begins on p. 6 (“Have you heard of Micky…”) and ends on p. 39. (“Was dry, slept.”) Finally, on p. 40, the vignette follows (“And that's why, thanks to Micky , cake every morning. ”) The publisher gives a page number of 40, which also corresponds to the bibliographical record by the Library of Congress . (LC Control No .: 70105483)
  2. ↑ Maurice Sendak: In the night kitchen . Diogenes, Zurich 1971, pp. 8–9. ( English "And fell through the dark, out of his clothes / Past the moon and his mama and papa sleeping tight" )
  3. ↑ Maurice Sendak: In the night kitchen . Diogenes, Zurich 1971, pp. 10-11. ( English "Into the light of the night kitchen" )
  4. ↑ a b Laurel and Hardy biographer and Ball State professor Wes D. Gehring describes the three bakers from the night kitchen as identical clones of Ollie . Wes D. Gehring: Laurel & Hardy: a bio-bibliography . Greenwood Publishing Group, New York 1990, ISBN 0-313-25172-X , p. 137.
  5. ↑ Maurice Sendak: In the night kitchen . Diogenes, Zurich 1971, p. 12. ( English "Where the bakers who bake till the dawn / so we can have cake in the morn / mixed Mickey in batter, chanting:" )
  6. ↑ Maurice Sendak: In the night kitchen . Diogenes, Zurich 1971, p 13 ( English "Milk in the batter! Milk in the batter! Stir it! Scrape it! Make it! It Bake!" )
  7. ↑ Maurice Sendak: In the night kitchen . Diogenes, Zurich 1971, pp. 14–15. ( English "And they put that batter up to bake a delicious Mickey-cake." )
  8. ↑ Maurice Sendak: In the night kitchen . Diogenes, Zurich 1971, pp. 16-17. ( English "I'm not milk and the milk is not me! I'm Mickey!" )
  9. ↑ Maurice Sendak: In the night kitchen . Diogenes, Zurich 1971, p 18 ( english "So he skipped from the oven and into bread dough, all ready to rise in the night kitchen" )
  10. ^ A b Maurice Sendak: In the night kitchen . Diogenes, Zurich 1971, p. 19. ( English "He kneaded and punched it / And pounded and pulled" )
  11. ^ A b Maurice Sendak: In the night kitchen . Diogenes, Zurich 1971, pp. 20-21. ( English "Till it looked Okay. / Then Mickey in dough was just on his way." )
  12. ↑ Maurice Sendak: In the night kitchen . Diogenes, Zurich 1971, pp. 22-23. ( English "Milk! Milk! Milk for the morning cake!" )
  13. ↑ Maurice Sendak: In the night kitchen . Diogenes, Zurich 1971, pp. 24-25. ( English "What's all the fuss? I'm Mickey the pilot! I get milk the Mickey way! / And he grabbed that cup as he flew up" )
  14. ^ A b Maurice Sendak: In the night kitchen . Diogenes, Zurich 1971, pp 26-27. ( English "Flew up and up and up and over the top of the Milky Way in the Night Kitchen" )
  15. ↑ Maurice Sendak: In the night kitchen . Diogenes, Zurich 1971, pp. 28-29.
  16. ^ A b Maurice Sendak: In the night kitchen . Diogenes, Zurich 1971, pp. 30–31. ( English "I'm in the milk, and the milk's in me. / God bless milk and God bless me!" )
  17. ↑ Maurice Sendak: In the night kitchen . Diogenes, Zurich 1971, p. 32. ( English "Then he swam to the top, pouring milk from his cup into the batter below." )
  18. ↑ Maurice Sendak: In the night kitchen . Diogenes, Zurich 1971, p 33. ( english "So the bakers, They mixed it and beat it and baked it." )
  19. ↑ Maurice Sendak: In the night kitchen . Diogenes, Zurich 1971, pp. 34–35. ( English "Milk in the batter! Milk in the batter! / We bake cake! And nothing's the matter!" )
  20. ↑ Maurice Sendak: In the night kitchen . Diogenes, Zurich 1971, pp. 36–37. ( English "Now Mickey in the night kitchen cried Cock-a-Doodle Doo! and slid down the side" )
  21. ↑ Maurice Sendak: In the night kitchen . Diogenes, Zurich 1971, pp. 38–39. ( English "Straight into bed / cakefree and dried." )
  22. ^ Sylvia Pantaleo, Lawrence Sipe: Exploring Peritextual Elements in Picturebooks. ( Memento of July 14, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 126 kB). International Reading Association Conference, Toronto 2007, p. 5. (In the glossary entry for vignette , this element is named as a typical vignette.)
  23. ↑ Maurice Sendak: In the night kitchen . Diogenes, Zurich 1971, p. 40. ( English "And that's why, thanks to Mickey, we have cake every morning." )
  24. ↑ Peter Hunt, Sheila G. Bannister Ray: International companion encyclopedia of children's literature . Taylor & Francis, London 1996, ISBN 0-415-08856-9 , pp. 239-240.
  25. ^ Anita Silvey: Children's books and their creators . Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston 1995, ISBN 0-395-65380-0 , p. 524.
  26. ↑ The term continuous narration was coined by Joseph Schwarcz: Ways of the illustrator: Visual communication in children's literature . American Library Association, Chicago 1982.
  27. ↑ Lawrence R. Sipe: Picture Books as Aesthetic Objects . ( Memento of August 27, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF). In: Literacy Teaching and Learning. Vol. 6, 2001, No. 1, pp. 34-35.
  28. ^ Lullabies and Night Songs , HarperCollins, New York 1965, ISBN 0-06-021820-7 .
  29. ↑ Selma G. Lanes: The Art of Maurice Sendak . Abrams, New York 1993, p. 149. Lanes refers to the style as English flat comic book style .
  30. ↑ Maurice Sendak: In the night kitchen . New York 1970, pp. 6-40. (Counted without title page and dedication, word count without labels on the food packaging, contractions like I'm or nothing’s counted as one word.)
  31. ↑ Maurice Sendak: In the night kitchen . Diogenes, Zurich 1971, pp. 6-40. (Counted without title page and dedication, number of words without labels on the food packaging, contractions with ellipses as there are counted as one word.)
  32. ^ Hans Adolf Halbey: Picture book: Literature . Weinheim 1997, pp. 111-120.
  33. ^ Hans Adolf Halbey: Picture book: Literature . Weinheim 1997, p. 122.
  34. ^ Entry on Hans Manz in the Lexicon of Contemporary Swiss Writers. (The Nutshell Library consists of the four mini-books Klaus , Chicken Soup with Rice , Alligators Everywhere and 1 was Hans .)
  35. ^ A b c Selma G. Lanes: Through the Looking Glass: Further Adventures & Misadventures in the Realm of Children's Literature . David R. Godine Publisher, Boston 2006, ISBN 1-56792-318-6 , pp. 57-58.
  36. ^ Morpheus (alias): Maurice Sendak's homage . In: Meeting McCay. December 4, 2007. (Blog, contains comparisons of individual panels from Little Nemo and Night kitchen .)
  37. ↑ Maurice Sendak: My book In the Night Kitchen is, in part, an homage to Winsor McCay. In: John Canemaker : Winsor McCay: His Life and Art . Abbeville Press, New York 1987, ISBN 0-89659-687-7 , foreword.
  38. ↑ Translated: “McCay and I serve the same Lord, our filial self. We do not fall back on our memories of childhood in the literal sense, but on the emotional memory of the stress and urgency of childhood. Neither of us forgot our childhood dreams. ”
    Maurice Sendak: Caldecott & Co: Notes on Books & Pictures . New York 1988, p. 78.
  39. ↑ Selma G. Lanes: Through the Looking Glass: Further Adventures & Misadventures in the Realm of Children's Literature . David R. Godine Publisher, Boston 2006, ISBN 1-56792-318-6 , p. 86.
  40. ↑ In the night kitchen . Diogenes, Zurich 1971; Cover picture in the English language Wikipedia.
  41. ↑ Rick Nichols: Sendak, wild about food . In: Philadelphia Inquirer. September 27, 2009. (With “the illustrator's Proustian inspiration”, Nichols refers to Proust, who in À la recherche du temps perdu uses the smell of freshly baked madeleine as a trigger for literary childhood memories, just as for Sendak the image of Sunshine-Baker and the smell of freshly baked cake evokes his New York childhood.)
  42. ↑ Maurice Sendak: Caldecott & Co . New York 1988, pp. 209f.
  43. ↑ Too Many Thoughts to Chew: A Sendak Stew. ( Memento from April 14, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Rosenbach Museum & Library, Philadelphia from September 23, 2009 to January 17, 2010.
  44. ↑ a b Rick Nichols: Sendak, wild about food . In: Philadelphia Inquirer. September 27, 2009.
  45. ↑ Kathryn Fuller-Seeley: Dish Night at the Movies. In: Jon Lewis, Eric Loren Smoodin (Eds.): Looking past the screen: case studies in American film history and method . Duke University Press, Durham 2007, ISBN 978-0-8223-3821-5 , pp. 246-275.
  46. ↑ a b c d e Selma G. Lanes: The Art of Maurice Sendak . Abrams, New York 1993, pp. 9-16.
  47. ↑ John Cech: Angels and wild things . University Park 1995, p. 31.
  48. ^ Jill P. May: Envisioning the Jewish Community in Children's Literature: Maurice Sendak and Isaac Singer. In: "The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association", Vol. 33, No. 3 / Vol. 34, No. 1 (Autumn 2000 - Winter 2001), pp. 137-151. English "a day of happiness and resentment"
  49. ↑ a b Selma G. Lanes: The Art of Maurice Sendak . Abrams, New York 1993, pp. 29-45.
  50. ↑ Selma G. Lanes: The Art of Maurice Sendak . Abrams, New York 1993, p. 43.
  51. ↑ Selma G. Lanes: The Art of Maurice Sendak . Abrams, New York 1993, p. 75.
  52. ^ A b c John Cech: Angels and wild things . University Park 1995, p. 177.
  53. ↑ John Cech gives in Angels and wild things. P. 177 1968 (sic!) As the year of the heart attack. However, the order of (1) heart attack, (2) Jennie's death, (3) death of her parents is undisputed in all sources. Jennie's death is dated 1967 in the night kitchen itself. Judy Taylor Hough, children's book editor at The Bodley Head , who accompanied Sendak in 1967 on the occasion of the first appearance of the Wild Things in Europe, was present during the infarct "a few days after April 7, 1967", see Speech by Judy Taylor Hough on Maurice Sendak , Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, Stockholm 2003.
  54. ↑ Selma G. Lanes: The Art of Maurice Sendak . Abrams, New York 1993, p. 183.
  55. ↑ Selma G. Lanes: The Art of Maurice Sendak . Abrams, New York 1993, pp. 173-174.
  56. ↑ a b Selma G. Lanes: The Art of Maurice Sendak . Abrams, New York 1993, pp. 174-175.
  57. ↑ Selma G. Lanes: The Art of Maurice Sendak . Abrams, New York 1993, pp. 175-184.
  58. ↑ Kara Keeling, Scott Pollard: Power, Food, and Eating in Maurice Sendak and Henrik Drescher: "Where the Wild Thing Are", "In the Night Kitchen" and "The Boy who Ate Around". In: Children's Literature in Education. Vol. 30, No. 2 (June 1999), pp. 135-136.
  59. ↑ Selma G. Lanes: Through the Looking Glass . Boston 2006, pp. 87-88.
  60. ↑ Selma G. Lanes: The Art of Maurice Sendak . Abrams, New York 1993, p. 189. English "Mickey the pilot's maiden flight over the Milky Way heralds a pioneering acknowledgment in a picture book for young children of the reality and urgency of their dream lives, a reality and urgency as important as and , in some ways, more important than those of their waking lives. "
  61. ↑ Siggi Seuss: A little piece of dust (interview with Maurice Sendak). In: "Die Zeit" No. 42/2004 of October 7, 2004.
  62. ↑ Ellen Handler Spitz: Inside Picture Books . Yale University Press, New Haven 2000, pp. 60f.
  63. ↑ John Cech: Angels and Wild Things . Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park 1995, p. 204.
  64. ^ Thomas Leddy: Aesthetics and Children's Picture Books. In: Journal of Aesthetic Education. Vol. 36, No. 4, Winter 2002, pp. 52-53.
  65. ↑ German  [...] a lousy-looking airplane that looks like a dough airplane can be let go.
    Selma G. Lanes: Through the Looking Glass . David R. Godine Publisher, Boston 2006, p. 88.
  66. ↑ Stephen J. Whitfield: In Search of American Jewish Culture . Brandeis University Press, Hanover (NH) 2001, ISBN 1-58465-171-7 , pp. 44-45.
  67. ^ Jill P. May: Envisioning the Jewish Community in Children's Literature: Maurice Sendak and Isaac Singer. In: "The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association", Vol. 33, No. 3 / Vol. 34, No. 1 (Autumn 2000 - Winter 2001), pp. 137-151.
  68. ↑ Selma G. Lanes: The Art of Maurice Sendak . Abrams, New York 1993, pp. 185-189.
  69. ↑ George A. Woods : In the Night Kitchen. In: New York Times Book Review. Vol.LXXV, No. 44 (November 1, 1970), p. 30.
  70. ^ A b Meryle Secrest : Demons and Delights of Maurice Sendak. In: Washington Post. November 22, 1970, pp. H1, H4-H5.
  71. ↑ Analogous transfer of the Sendak quote from the Washington Post of November 22, 1970: “I have just finished two years of uninterrupted work in the night kitchen . Everything I read in the time and almost everything I did had something to do with it. And yet the book doesn't count more than about 350 words. [...] I find my work more interesting than ever. But that doesn't prevent my chronic depression either. […] I have learned to use my energy sparingly. You shouldn't waste your time on things in which you have no vital interest. It is too valuable for that. "
  72. ^ Paul Heins: Review of "In the Night Kitchen" by Maurice Sendak. In: The Horn Book. February 1971, pp. 44-45.
  73. ^ Leonard Marcus, Leonard S. Marcus: Minders of make-believe: idealists, entrepreneurs, and the shaping of American children's literature . Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Orlando (FL) 2008, ISBN 978-0-395-67407-9 , p. 253. The authors compare the free handling of adult topics in children's literature in Children's Literature in the early 1970s with Horn Book Magazine under the conservative and academic ( donnish ) editor-in-chief Paul Heins: English “In contrast, Paul Heins, in a review published in The Horn Book the previous year of Maurice Sendak's latest picture book, In the Night Kitchen , had sheepishly avoided all mention of Mickey's nudity even as he hailed the book as a 'work of art' replete with 'subconscious elements' that complicated and deepened the 'storytelling and pictorialization'. "
  74. ↑ For example:
    • Finnish Mikko maitomies . Weilin + Göös, Helsinki 1972.
    • French cuisine de nuit . L'Ecole des loisirs, Paris 1972.
    • dutch In de nachtkeuken . Amsterdam 1981.
    • Swedish I nattköket . Stockholm 1986.
    • spanish La cocina de noche . Alfaguara, Madrid 1987.
    • Italian Luca la luna e il latte . Babalibri, Milan 2000.
  75. ^ Brian Kenney: On Our Best Behavior: How do you whittle 13,000 books down to 54 titles? ( Memento from January 27, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ) In: School Library Journal . December 1, 2009.
  76. ^ Eden Ross Lipson, Fifty Years of the Best Illustrated Children's Books . In: New York Times. November 17, 2002.
    Christopher Lehmann-Haupt: Books of The Times; Children's Book of the Year. In: New York Times. 7 December 1970, p. 43.
  77. ^ ALA Children's Services Division, Book Reevaluation Committee (Ed.): Notable children's books, 1940-1970 . American Library Association, Chicago 1977.
  78. ^ Caldecott Medal & Honor Books, 1938-Present on the ALA website. The other two books that won the Caldecott Honor were The Angry Moon , illustrated by Blair Lent and told by William Sleator, and Frog and Toad are Friends by Arnold Lobel . The highest award - the Caldecott Medal  - was given to A Story A Story by Gail E. Haley .
  79. ^ Henry Raymont: Random House Gets Carey Prize As the Publisher of "Picasso 347". In: New York Times. June 2, 1971, p. 31.
  80. ↑ comparisons to Sendak himself: English "I have this idiot name tag Which says 'controversial'. I've had it since 1965, with 'Where the Wild Things Are.' It's like Pavlov's dogs: Every time I do a book, they all carry on. It may be good for business, but it's tiresome for me. “ , Which breaks the controversies ( Wilde Kerle : too subversive and nightmarish, Night Kitchen : an outcry over the portrayal of a boy's penis, Outside Over There : too harsh on the rivalry between siblings ) as a series. In: Sarah Lyall: Maurice Sendak Sheds Moonlight on a Dark Tale . In: New York Times. 20th September 1993.
  81. ↑ George MacDonald: The light princess. with illustrations by Maurice Sendak. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York 1969, LCCN  69-014981 .
  82. ↑ Selma G. Lanes: The Art of Maurice Sendak . Abrams, New York 1993, p. 145. Lanes describes the naked princess as an English royal girl child .
  83. ↑ ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom (Ed.): Intellectual Freedom Manual. 7th edition. ALA Editions, Chicago 2006, ISBN 0-8389-3561-3 , pp. 148-151.
  84. ↑ 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books: 1990-2000. ( Memento dated August 23, 2010 on WebCite ) ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom, Chicago.
  85. ↑ 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books: 2000–2009 . ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom, Chicago.
  86. ^ Scott Timberg: Maurice Sendak and his "Wild Things": The legacy of their 1963 rumpus. In: Los Angeles Times. October 11, 2009. ("If it was known then - as Sendak revealed last year - that the author is gay, the controversy might have played out much more disastrously.")
  87. ↑ Patricia Cohen: Concerns Beyond Just Where the Wild Things Are . In: The New York Times. September 9, 2008.
  88. ↑ Where the Wild Things Are ( Memento from December 3, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) - animation.
  89. ↑ Richard Brody: Where are the Wild Things? . In: The New Yorker . March 26, 2009.
  90. ^ John Cech: Maurice Sendak: In the Night Kitchen, Weston Woods 1987. In: Horn Book Magazine. Vol. 64-65 (1988), ISSN  0018-5078 , pp. 378-379.
  91. ^ Rita Dove: Grace Notes . WW Norton, New York 1989, ISBN 0-393-02719-8 .
  92. ↑ E.g .: "After Reading Mickey in the Night Kitchen for the Third Time Before Bed" . In: Jim Elledge, Susan Swartwout (Eds.): Real Things: An Anthology of Popular Culture in American Poetry . Indiana University Press, Bloomington 1999, ISBN 0-253-21229-4 , pp. 89-90.
  93. ↑ Christine Ammer (Ed.): The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms . Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Orlando 1997, ISBN 0-395-72774-X , p. 341.
  94. ^ Roberta Hershenson: The Collaboration In the Night Kitchen . In: The New York Times. June 7, 1992.
  95. ↑ Maurice Sendak and Anthony Hiss, Storyboard, “REALLY ROSIE,” . In: The New Yorker. January 18, 1993, p. 70.