Where The Wild Things Are: A Retelling

Yesterday I introduced grandson Brendan, age 3, to Maurice Sendak's famous picture book Where the Wild Things Are. He requested four repeats, so it was fresh on my mind when I picked up The New Yorker a few hours later and found a story by Dave Eggers called "Max at Sea." It didn't take long to realize that Eggers was retelling, with much embellishment, Sendak's story of Max, the boy in the wolf costume who acts up, gets sent to bed without supper, and sails to a fantasy island of strange monsters. In the new version, Max joins the monsters in destroying their own nests, a crime I thought bizarre (as did Max) until I thought of how easily a child can wreck his own home. Max wins the monster's approval and is made their king. "Let the wild rumpus begin!" he proclaims, as in the original--and the story is over.

The best part of Sendak's story for me is Max's return to his bedroom, where he finds that dinner has been left for him, and it's still warm. I guess for Eggers it's all about the rumpus. I'm not sure that readers unfamiliar with the story will get much from "Max at Sea," but if you love the original, you will probably enjoy Eggers' riff on it.

Later...turns out Eggers wrote the screenplay for the upcoming movie. And that the story in The New Yorker is part of a larger novel. Go here for an interview with Eggers about all these wild things. A link to the story is at the start of the interview.