In the Night Kitchen

In the Night Kitchen, by Maurice Sendak

The next book on my list of "Curiously Controversial Children's Books" comes from Maurice Sendak, the author of the wonderful classic, Where the Wild Things Are. When I opened this book, I didn't really see why it could be seen as controversial. However, on the second page, we see the little boy, Mickey, falling "through the dark, out of his clothes." He literally, becomes, completely naked, exposing his genitals. On the next page, we see a larger picture that more clearly shows the same naked boy in case you missed it on the previous page. He sits in a bowl of something, and his adventure in the night kitchen begins.

Three oversized bakers, who look a little bit like Sendak's monsters in size and stature from Where the Wild Things Are, begin mixing Mickey into the batter that they are working on. As he escapes from the thick cakey-batter, he continues to find himself in a type of imaginary city where everything is created from food and items that you really would find around a kitchen. Mickey continues to somehow lose his "food clothes" throughout the story and is constantly in the buff.

Aside from the fact that the story is essentially told from a naked little boy with a wild imagination, this is a wonderful story. I loved how the illustrations looked, and how the author used his creativity to make the world of the night kitchen from bags of beans, cartons of cream, and loaves of bread. Having the little boy be naked, where the most controversial aspect of the story lies, is almost necessary as the bakers are trying to create a cake with him as one of the ingredients. However, I think that showing him completely nude could have been done in a much different way and still have made the story as good as it was.