Where the monsters live (book). Being the king of monsters is hindered by the smell of food prepared by Maurice Sendak's mother where they live

This book is also a great example of what the size of an illustration in a book means and how it plays a role in storytelling.

For Maurice Sendak, this was the first book he himself wrote and illustrated. Prior to that, he drew pictures for the works of other authors.

The book was first published in 1963 year at the publishing house "Harper & Row" and soon became a classic of modern children's literature in the United States.

Initially, the idea was different, and the book was called "Where Horses Live".

But the publisher looked at the drawn horses and said his "fi": "You, Maurice, do not know how to draw horses. Think of something else!"

This is a great example of how failure turns out to be incredible success later!

Because the idea of ​​monsters was born from commonplace horses!

And the book took on a completely different meaning!

Now we have a story about fantasy. But there is nothing terrible in it.

It only shows how often children repeat meaninglessly after their parents. Copy their behavior and words. But the imagination of children is so great that it completely absorbs all their thoughts. And the parents take offense later!

Who is not familiar with this situation? Perhaps everyone has heard such words! And then they themselves said!

Sendak recalled his childhood impressions of numerous uncles and aunts who annoyed him during visits to their homes and said: "You are so cute that I will eat you now!"

Subsequently, Maurice Sendak also named his favorite monsters as relatives!

You know, like a joke. Family, sometimes they swear, but still loved ones and relatives.

When Sendak worked with composer Oliver Knassen on an opera based on the book, he gave the monsters the names of their relatives (Tsippi, Moishe, Aaron, Emile and Bernard).

The unpretentious story became very popular. And, as often happens, she began to capture other areas of art ...

Surely many remember that in 2009 came out on the screens film "Where the monsters live".

There was also a cartoon, an opera ...

This story is so popular that mentions of it can be found out of the blue!

The Simpsons!

In the episode "The Girl Who Slept Too Little" of the 17th season of the animated series "The Simpsons", the book is referred to as "The Land of Wild Beasts" ( The land of wild beasts)

Children's book, you say? However, the harsh Metallicainspired to write a whole song!

American metal band Metallica based on the book wrote the song "Where The Wild Things Are" from the album ReLoad.

This story was not popular in Russia. More precisely, no one has ever fully printed it. Soviet times, you know. Not before.

At the end of 2014, the book was published by the Pink Giraffe publishing house in Russian translation by Evgeniya Kanishcheva. The title of the book was rendered in the well-established version “Where the monsters live”, although the monsters themselves are translated as Fear-images in the text.

Do you think the translator did the right thing? I liked the word "fear image", but it's kind of complicated. And the "monster" seems nicer and kinder. To whom the parents did not say: "You are my monster!"

Although children seem to like strange words with a catch. Perhaps the "fear image" is nothing like that!

ANNOTATION

“That evening Max dressed up as a wolf and arranged a shurum-burum. And then a burum-shurum. And my mother said:“ Oh, you monster! ”And Max said:“ I am a fear-lover, and I will eat you! ”And my mother sent him to sleep. supper ".

This situation seems to be familiar to millions of parents all over the world. A child who has been so naughty that he cannot stop. And a mother who does not want to endure disobedience and impoliteness. What will happen next? Therapy for adults, how to show endurance and patience in stressful situations? An instructive story for a child, how it is impossible to behave and what happens?

Maurice Sendak tells a very different story. In it, Max goes to a magical land inhabited by Fearsimages of all sizes and stripes. There, the most courageous and fearless fear image, of course, turns out to be a little boy. He has fun with all his heart and fears. Until he gets bored and returns to his cozy home, where it smells like mom's pie. After all, not a single mother in the world will leave her child, even if it is the King of Fear-images, without dinner.

When this book, invented and painted by Maurice Sendak, first saw the light, many parents, librarians and teachers were outraged: "On the very first pages, the child quarrels with his mother, and the author does not blame him for 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 inhabited by terrible fear images, and not always adults can and should control everything in it. Children need to learn to experience the strongest and most violent feelings for themselves in order to cope with difficult life situations.

Not only children fell in love with the book "Where the monsters live". In 1964, a year after its publication, it received the prestigious Caldecott Medal as the best illustrated book for children.

Many times Sendak's story has made it onto the lists of the best children's books compiled by librarians, educators, school teachers and parents. For artists, "Where Monsters Live" has become the standard of book illustration. Since its publication, the book has sold 19 million copies, translated into 13 languages, opera has been staged and a feature film has been shot.

In Russia, Sendak's most famous book (like the rest of his books) has never been published. In 1988, a Russian translation of "Monsters" with one of the illustrations was published in the magazine "Vesyolye Kartinki", in 1989 it was published in Estonia in Estonian.

For The Pink Giraffe, the book Where Monsters Live was brilliantly translated by Evgenia Kanishcheva, one of the best translators of children's literature.
For primary school age.

PLOT

The story is very short. The retelling fully covers all the points in the book.

The main character of the book is a boy named Max, who plays at home, dressed up as a wolf. After several hooligan antics, his mother calls him a "monster" ( Wild thing), and he tells her to this: "I'll eat you!" Then mom sends him to sleep without supper. In his room, Max imagines that there is a dense forest around him. Then he sails the sea on a ship and finds himself in the Land of Monsters. The monsters inhabiting the country have a frightening appearance (huge in size, with fangs and horns), but Max conquers them, as he can "look into their yellow eyes without even blinking." He becomes king over all monsters and orders them to arrange wild dances, in which he himself participates. However, he soon gets tired of it, and now he sends the monsters to sleep without supper. Max becomes lonely and he goes 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 discovers a still hot dinner on the table.

DESCRIPTION

Pages: 40 (Offset)

There is really very little text! This was the artist's idea. He even adjusted the original version to make it smaller.

Therefore 0+

Paper makes me feel incredible nostalgia! It is not glossy, not heavy, as is already accustomed to in modern publications. And I really like it! The feeling that the book was published several decades ago and miraculously transported to the future, i.e. our present, perfectly preserved!

Somewhat reminiscent of watercolor paper (but not grainy). And the drawings on it seem to have just been drawn by the artist.

I am glad that the publisher printed on this type of paper. I noticed that many modern editions do not look at all due to the change of paper. An artist, drawing illustrations, takes into account how they will look on a particular type of paper.

The illustrations were done in line art and probably with a watercolor substrate. Somewhere like there is whitewash.

I would like to draw your attention to the technique used by Maurice Sendak.

Look for the size of the illustration on the page.

The story begins. A small picture in reality.

Then one page is no longer enough for her, and she "grabs" the next one until it takes up the entire spread.

This is how the artist shows that Max, the protagonist of the book, was so carried away by the fantasy that the existing reality ceased to exist for him.

And finally, Tsippi, Moishe, Aaron, Emil and Bernard! I wonder which of them is who? ..

It was the moment when Max was completely carried away, and the fantasy captured him completely!

Finally, he's back!

And the mother, who could not leave her beloved child hungry, it turns out, brought dinner.

Last page ... No pictures. Dinner is supper. Reality - she is! For a very hungry and brave person - the King of Fear Images, just a minute! - there is no time left in the thoughts for fantasies. Bon Appetit!

Those. viewing!

This book is valuable because it is an example of atypical thinking.

Starting with the history of creation and ending with a topic that was not welcomed in those years (a quarrel with my mother). She does not teach ideal behavior. It only shows that fantasy is normal, it's great! That the mother is always on the side of her child, that she loves him in spite of any petty mischief.

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I bought for 433 rubles. with promotions in the maze.

I hung in the postponed for a long time, until I received a notification that I was in stock. So I don’t know, even though the labyrinth is available at the moment, but it may be that these are remnants.

Or maybe a reissue!

An English version can be ordered for ozone. That's what I wanted. And, to be honest, I still doubt it. Still, English is the original.

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And the first time I saw a book in the Library of Foreign Literature (on Kitay-Gorod, a couple of trolley bus stops).

She is still there. I advise you to go! Sometimes various events are held there. I was on one of these when I saw this book.

Maurice Sendak

He illustrated Harper Collins' novel "The Bear"; in 1996, based on his illustrations, the animated series of the same name (39 episodes) was filmed in Canada. As an actor he appeared in the TV series "Angels in America" ​​(). In 2009, the premiere of the film based on the fairy tale "Where the monsters live" is planned.

Links

Other books on similar topics:

See also other dictionaries:

- "Where the wild things are": "Where the monsters live (book)" children's picture book by American writer and artist Maurice Sendak (1963) "Where the monsters live (cartoon) »Animated film ... ... Wikipedia

A boy dressed as a white wolf named Max is terrorizing - as a joke, perhaps, or not? - your dog, chasing it with a fork; when his mother comes to reason with him, he threatens to devour her too. She, angry, sends him to sleep without supper. The room turns into a forest, there the sea, a yacht appear, and Max floats on it somewhere far, far away - to where the fear-image monsters live, ready - well, yes, it's great again - to devour it. Having hypnotized them, however, with his heavy look, 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, has cooled down during this time - which cannot be said about the dinner, which is waiting for the hero on the table.

American Chukovsky Maurice Sendak Photo: sirmitchell.com The man who created this strange tale, where everyone is grotesquely preoccupied with digestive problems, was called 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 on The Monsters, they tried to ban them, filmed, transformed into an opera and a play, translated into all languages ​​of the world, parodied in The Simpsons, sold (a million, two, three ... twenty, now, probably, thirty million copies) - and interpreted, interpreted, interpreted. The adults quickly grasped that The Monsters was a text “with a secret,” and, leaving the children the opportunity to learn from the book ambiguous - and all the more valuable - lessons about how life works, they undertook an unprecedented hermeneutic assault in terms of 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 more authentic - 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 Kafkaesian "Metamorphosis" to Conrad's "Heart darkness ”, from the Younger Edda ... Well, it is obvious that Max's yacht is, in fact, the Naglfar ship, the one 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 story recognizable both in folklore and in 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 Wildness and Civilization, about the Return of the Prodigal Son - and about Mother's Forgiveness, about Initiation and Fear. And this strange - not to say David Lynchevsky - werewolf boy who enters into (oedipal? "Mom-I'll-eat you." ? In fact, this is a story about a postponed meal - and you don't need to be a first-class psychoanalyst to understand what kind of ritual might be implied.

The situation is even worse with (suspiciously gruffalo-like; although "Gruffalo", of course, was created much later) fear-image monsters: they seem to be scary, but at the same time comical; and most importantly, it is not clear what the essence of - the wavering, sitting, so to speak, on the metaphysical fence separating Good and Evil; and the devil only knows which side it would take them into their heads to jump on. It is clear that they are inexperienced 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, with the "native" theme, too, not everything, thank God: it is known that Sendak drew fear images from his distant relatives, who used to come to his house, pat him on the head, saying something like "You are so lovely - you will lick your fingers." ; in the opera, based on his fairy tale, Sendak directly named the monsters by the names of his uncles and aunts - Tsyppi, Moishe, Aaron, etc. The irony is that Max's own use of fear-images obviously repeats - and again parodies - the speech of his own mother, from whom he escaped ("Stop fearfulness! - Max ordered. And sent everyone to sleep. Without supper"): in relation to them, he is adult, domineering and civilized. So, there is reason to assume that we also have in some way the history of the West, which colonized the rest of the world, so that then, by the 60s of the twentieth century, having cooled down a bit, return to our own dinner and, if not repent, then calm down. Yes, such a story teaches something.

Teaches ... puzzles ... brings to the parallels ... shocks with unexpected allusions ... that's right; it’s just not clear how this kind of book - even if it really is an original and bizarre artistic study of childhood phobias and the mechanisms by which our imagination copes with them - can really become a favorite of some child? Along with "Aibolit", "Mustached striped" and "Chatterbox"? Not a child raised on Chukovsky, Marshak and Barto, at least.

• Publisher "Pink Giraffe", Moscow, 2014, translated by E. Kanishcheva

“That evening Max dressed up as a wolf and arranged a shurum-burum. And then a burum-shurum. And my mother said:“ Oh, you monster! ”And Max said:“ I'm a fear-lover, and I'll eat you! ”And my mother sent him to sleep. supper ".
This situation seems to be familiar to millions of parents all over the world. A child who has been so naughty that he cannot stop. And a mother who does not want to endure disobedience and impoliteness. What will happen next? Therapy for adults, how to show endurance and patience in stressful situations? An instructive story for a child, how it is impossible to behave and what happens?
Maurice Sendak tells a very different story. In it, Max goes to a magical land inhabited by Fearsimages of all sizes and stripes. There, the most courageous and fearless fear image, of course, turns out to be a little boy. He has fun with all his heart and fears. Until he gets bored and returns to his cozy home, where it smells like mom's pie. After all, not a single mother in the world will leave her child, even if it is the King of Fear-images, without dinner.
When this book, invented and painted by Maurice Sendak, first saw the light, many parents, librarians and teachers were outraged: "On the very first pages, the child quarrels with his mother, and the author does not blame him for 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 inhabited by terrible fear images, and not always adults can and should control everything in it. Children need to learn to experience the strongest and most violent feelings for themselves in order to cope with difficult life situations.
Not only children fell in love with the book "Where the monsters live". In 1964, a year after its publication, it received the prestigious Caldecott Medal as the best illustrated book for children. Many times Sendak's story has made it onto the lists of the best children's books compiled by librarians, educators, school teachers and parents. For artists, "Where Monsters Live" has become the standard of book illustration. Since its publication, the book has sold 19 million copies, translated into 13 languages, opera has been staged and a feature film has been shot.
In Russia, Sendak's most famous book (like the rest of his books) has never been published. In 1988, a Russian translation of "Monsters" with one of the illustrations was published in the magazine "Vesyolye Kartinki", in 1989 it was published in Estonia in Estonian. For The Pink Giraffe, the book Where Monsters Live was brilliantly translated by Evgenia Kanishcheva, one of the best translators of children's literature.
For primary school age.

The questions that publishers, bookstore sellers, and (I hope) librarians may have to answer are easy to list because they are quite “standard”. Exactly the same questions arose when "Gruffalo" appeared (why there is a bogeyman on the cover), and about the most different famous picture books (why there is not enough text in the book). And the question of "good" in general traditionally arises in our minds in connection with any translated literature.

Since I really like this book - I like the cover with the monster, and the pictures inside, and the accompanying text, and besides, all this, in my opinion, has a rather deep meaning - I want to explain how I understand it.

To begin with, there is "very little text" in the book.

In the last decade, we have published a huge number of translated books, and we are faced with a variety of phenomena of book culture, many of which turned out to be completely new to us. One of these innovations was picture books. This is not to say that children (and adults) of the Soviet era did not know picture books at all. There were, for example, cardboard books, or "clamshells": on each page there is a large picture, under it - a small poem or two or three sentences of a fairy tale. But these books, to put it mildly, did not command the respect they deserve. Like a “typical” child of the 60s, I had such books. And I remember very well how already at the age of four I was building fences out of them. That is, these cardboard "clamshells" were strongly associated with pot-age children. Of course, there was a magazine called Veselye Kartinki. But he also existed in a strictly assigned age niche - preschool. There was also Suteev (read and re-read many times), and there were also the adored "The Adventures of Pif", which came out in the 60s without specifying the names of the author and artist. But they were also addressed to children between the ages of four and about eight years old.

Naturally, in our distant Soviet childhood, there were illustrated books "with big letters and beautiful pictures." But there is a big difference between a picture book and a picture book. In a picture book, the leading "language" is the language of illustration. Or the text and the picture cannot exist separately from each other, the text is “soldered” into the picture and is its inseparable part. In other words, this text cannot be imagined within another illustrative series (as in the books of Suteev and in "The Adventures of Pith").

So, these very picture books represent a powerful independent direction in Western book publishing, which goes far beyond the preschool age in terms of the variety and complexity of topics. For example, a picture-book for teenagers was greatly developed there. I can assume that the development of the genre of picture books was largely facilitated by the culture of comics, where the language of drawing was the main language of communication with the reader. But the picture book is not a comic strip. This is something separate.

There are indeed fewer words in a picture book than in a textbook familiar to us. The picture book genre itself requires a laconic text. But conciseness only means that the author will be very careful and demanding in selecting words. At the same time, pictures should carry an important part of the meaning, without which the author's statement will not only be incomplete, but even distorted. In other words, a picture book assumes reading simultaneously in two languages ​​- verbal and graphic.

This is unusual for us. For some reason, we cannot treat words and pictures with equal respect. For example, I found out with horror that I could not "read" comics - I looked and did not see. It turned out that I absolutely do not know how to consistently move my gaze from picture to picture. This is an unusual way of perceiving information for me. That is, I am a typical representative of the previous generations of the Soviet logocentric culture. And logocentricity is, of course, "respect for the printed word." However, this respect can have many different consequences. On the one hand, traditionally "a poet in Russia is more than a poet." On the other hand, even some 60 years ago, our society also experienced the terrifying power of such a word, when a critical article published in the main Soviet newspaper Pravda could literally kill.

Our children and grandchildren grow up in a completely different environment, in which the languages ​​of visual culture play a huge role. The lack of fanaticism in relation to the word makes them much freer in the perception of the graphic language. Therefore, they will love and appreciate picture books. And, perhaps, picture books will greatly expand the circle of children-readers.

In other words, in the book “Where the monsters live”, in which there is less text than we are used to seeing, children have something to read. Reading only is "different."

Now, actually about the monsters, about "what this fairy tale teaches us" and where is the necessary, from the point of view of adults, good.

The story told by Maurice Sendak is an everyday episode from the life of a small child. Judging by the pictures, this "creature" is five to seven years old. That is, a child at the age of "role-playing games", when children like to dress up in costumes and represent themselves as someone. Max (this is the name of the hero of the story) one fine evening puts on a wolf costume, well, and begins to behave according to the "uniform" - namely, to be disgraceful. Why disgrace? Apparently because the wolf is a wild animal, which is not at all obliged to obey the rules of human society. And if you dress up as a wolf, then you (and this is natural for a child of five or seven years old) absolutely enter the image, literally "live in someone else's skin" and, as it were, get the full right (internally justified right) to behave like a wolf.

But this motivation for playing outrage turns out to be completely unconvincing for adults, in particular - for Max's mother. Mom pulls him down and calls him a "monster" (wild creature). Max, however, has already played too much, and the remark of his mother does not calm him down, but provokes a new "wolf" outrage: "I will eat you!" - he answers mom. And, as a result, he is punished: he is sent to sleep without supper. Well, it happens. Apparently, my mother no longer has the means to calm him down.

Is it offensive to Max? It's a shame. The child is always offended when he is punished. And although there is not a word about the insult in the text, it is "written" on the face of Max the wolf (he never took off his ill-fated suit).

The situation is typical. The adult gets angry, punishes the child. The child is offended (there is absolutely no need to expect "objectivity" and even repentance from him). And resentment is such a thing that cannot be endured. And you need to come up with a way to cope with this resentment, do something like that in order to get out of the situation of "being punished." If this is impossible in reality, you need to do it in your imagination (the suit, I remind you, has not yet been removed).

Naturally, there is not a word about this in the text either. The text says that a forest suddenly grows in Max's room. And the picture shows how much Max likes this "decision" of his, his idea of ​​"growing" a forest in the room. And how he brings it to "perfection", as a result of which the walls of the room dissolve, disappear, but an endless ocean appears, and Max on a successfully appeared boat sails somewhere to unknown lands. To run away from home, from annoying adults and their endless demands is the eternal dream of an offended child.

And then the fun begins. Max sails "where the monsters live." That is, where there are a lot of people like himself. The same as he - in meaning. After all, what did mom say? She told Max: you are a monster! Wild creature.

But the pictures depict such terrible monsters, such fanged-toothed, clawed and horned creatures, each time ten times larger than Max, that we all need to understand: Max is not the most terrible of monsters at all. In his wolf suit, he is just a good boy next to these horrible creatures. And they all also want to attack him. But although Max is smaller than the monsters, and although he does not have such terrible claws and fangs, he is able to tame them. It is enough for him to say: well, be quiet! - and look unblinkingly into their yellow eyes.

A little man in a wolf suit actually knows the value of all these "terrifying grips", he knows them "from the inside of the suit", which still gives him strength (imagination is a great magic tool). And what are the monsters? They are immediately tamed. They recognize Max as the king. (Of course! Once he was called a monster, then he will be not just a monster, but the most important one. This is not so offensive.) And then Max gives the monsters a signal to collectively rage. At his command, they begin to jump wildly, jump trees, goggle, growl, scream - in general, they do everything that Max did before alone and for which he was sent to sleep without supper. And although the king of monsters seems to be pleased with what is happening, for some reason he cannot forget that he was punished. Therefore, when he gets tired of all this frenzy, when he gets tired of it, Max sends the monsters (they are also tired) to sleep, and to sleep without supper. It is not clear what the monsters were guilty of, but there is no time for justice. They did this to Max, and he will do this to those over whom he has power - for the sake of experiencing the fullness of this power. And what? Adults can punish, but children cannot? Max sent the monsters to sleep without supper, because he, too, is like an adult ... Like a mother ... And then ... Then a terrible feeling of loneliness rolls over the poor child. No remorse, no. And the desire to be fondled. So that there was someone who would love him more than anyone else in the world.

You can "grow" the forest and dissolve the walls of the room, but you are still very small to endlessly endure both yourself and the monsters that your imagination has spawned in such numbers. It seems that you are powerful, and received confirmation of this, but as soon as you heard the smell of delicious food (apparently, my mother changed her mind and decided to mitigate the punishment) - that's it! We must "go home." We must return to reality. The imaginary world is tiresome too. And in the end, everything has already happened here. Everything you wanted. You have already been the king of terrible creatures, you have already enjoyed imaginary power. And Max gets into the boat and sets off on the return journey (after all, the game cannot go in violation of the rules). The monsters rush to the shore, beg Max to stay, they love him so much that they would like to eat (this is so natural for monsters), but Max is adamant. More precisely, he really wants to go home. And, maybe, he even regrets a little that he did something wrong. At least, he swims back, closing his eyes - "looking" inside himself. And you can see, you can see that he is tired of being a monster! It's so great to be in your own room - it's so great that the suit, the savage skin, slowly begins to "slip". And the monster-wolf obviously wants to return to human form - after all, there is such a smell in the room! Dinner is still hot.

That's about how.

I think there is a lot to read here. It seems to me that Sendak's short text is very capacious in content. Capacious and psychologically thin and precise.
Sendak at one time gave interviews and explained the features of his work. To understand “Where the monsters live”, in my opinion, this is important: “I don’t like the sentimental images of children, such nice little kids ... I wanted to show the children as they really are - but with love ... children wish no one harm. They just don't know yet what "right" means. Or mistaken for right what is false. A monstrous confusion reigns in the children's world! "

This view of the child is important for the child himself. Because it is important for a child to be understood. The feeling that they “see right through” you can be salutary, because in this case there is no need to lie. And any lie is destructive.

But this does not mean that a child, when reading and looking at Sendak's book, is able to rationally explain his emotions about the events taking place in it, and even more so to express in words the “recognition” that happened to him. While reading, a lot happens to us on a subconscious level. But it is no less valuable.