Where the Wild Things Are is for every child and every adult who remembers being the kind of child who bit someone not-so lovingly and with a grin that wasn't worshipped.

Sendak's easy and loving treatment of the dark side of children aside, few other picture books so effortlessly unlock for its readers, their memory keys: it is impossible to read this book without remembering being mutinous. Fights with family, the comfort of rebellion, usually realized underneath beds, hatching plots featuring oneself in outlandish places, with or without SFX. Losing track of time as tables turned upside down became ships and bedsheets were employed in a manner one imagined was grand and it stopped mattering what a pirate really looked like because you had more important things to do: such as being the first to set down the rules. Rules with the illusion of complexity so that everyone could argue over it later, and some smartypants could say, "Look, technically, I am not out because..." Followed by much joyful bickering.

And then, there were the games we invented and played alone to amuse ourselves, the ones that were kaleidoscopes on a long, hot afternoon.

FatCat Stars:

For Max, the hero: what a gleeful, wicked, authoritative, endearing child.

For its artwork: capturing through apertures, large and small, these wild things.

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