This movie tie-in edition--complete with a fur covering--is based loosely on the storybook by Maurice Sendak and the screenplay co-written with Spike Jonze.
The Wild Things — based loosely on the storybook by Maurice Sendak and the screenplay cowritten with Spike Jonze — is about the confusions of a boy, Max, making his way in a world he can’t control. His father is gone, his mother is spending time with a younger boyfriend, his sister is becoming a teenager and no longer has interest in him. At the same time, Max finds himself capable of startling acts of wildness: he wears a wolf suit, bites his mom, and can’t always control his outbursts. During a fight at home, Max flees and runs away into the woods. He finds a boat there, jumps in, and ends up on the open sea, destination unknown. He lands on the island of the Wild Things, and soon he becomes their king. But things get complicated when Max realizes that the Wild Things want as much from him as he wants from them. Funny, dark, and alive, The Wild Things is a timeless and time-tested tale for all ages.
Reviews
"Dave Eggers' terrific new novel. . . . His highest achievement is in having found a fresh way to tell us a story we already know so well...and pursue us howling into adulthood." — The Boston Globe
“This is no longer Maurice Sendak’s Max, nor Spike Jonze’s Max, but rather Dave Eggers’s Max. . . . Eggers makes Max his own through deft touches. . . . Eggers brings Max to life with his trademark kinetic narrative energy.” —The Globe and Mail
“A wonderful read. . . . Does Sendak’s original picture book proud. . . . In typical Eggers fashion, there’s also plenty of humour––some of it sly.” — The Gazette --
"Eggers, in this funny and touching novelization of Maurice Sendak's picture book, is brilliant at portraying the exuberance and chaos of a young boy's mind and heart."— San Francisco Chronicle
"Dave Eggers has created a novel like childhood itself: sometimes weird, sometimes dark, and full of wonder.... Like the original, this is far from the cosy world kids are often fed, but it has real heart—Eggers uses simple but superbly effective prose to suggest that childhood has to be lived without cosseting for us to grow up with any semblance of a normal personality." — Doug Johnstone, the Independent
“A darkly comic tale for all ages.” — Publishers Weekly
"Everything is in the spirit of Sendak’s book. There are knowing nods—Max carves his name on the boat during the boring trip to the island—and the monsters retain their utter, incomprehensible difference. There is far more emotion: the monsters are petulant, panicky, selfish, vulnerable and violent. 'We want what we want. We want all the things we want,' says one, 'oh, and we want no more want.' Without being too grandiose, Max learns that 'uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.' His attempts to govern the monsters slip from rumpus to warfare to disillusionment. More than in the original, Max learns what it feels like to let others down, although this moral is not forced nor mawkish. The parting is affecting. It won't just be Max and the monsters that end in 'a mess of tears.'” — Stuart Kelly, The Scotsman
