On the first day of class in my Young Adult Fiction course, I read Where the Wild Things Are to my students. I do this because it introduces many of the themes we will encounter throughout the semester and also because I love to have the excuse to read the book aloud. But the book brings into the classroom much more than the practical and the pleasurable. When I read those words and turn those pages, a magic is released and reminds all of us, if any of us had forgotten, that literature written for young people plucks at our souls and makes them sing.
Where the Wild Things Are is a wonderful place in the truest sense of “wonderful,” but I have always found the most magical part of the book to be the last line. Max sails back home, in and out of weeks, to find his supper waiting for him: “and it was still hot.”
My students and I talk about why this is such a perfect ending to the story, and I often make the argument that it all hinges on the word “hot.” If the food was warm, we would know that Max’s mother had set the dish in his room but then had wandered away, turning her attention to something else. Because the supper is “still hot,” we can be sure, as can Max, that his mother has taken special care with his supper. She knows what he needs and when he needs it. She doesn’t need to be in his room, or in the final illustration, because Max knows she is there for him. The hot food makes her love plain.
Lots of children’s books, for young readers and older ones, are about journeys away from home, and these are fascinating and wonderful. But sometimes the journeys that move us most are the returns. When Wendy flies back into the nursery, when Alice runs inside for tea, when the Pevensie children tumble out of the wardrobe, when Harry goes to bed in his four-poster, readers are reminded that part of the magic of going away is the magic of coming back.
Sendak captured this magic with beautiful simplicity. Maurice Sendak has gone away. He sails off “in and out of weeks,” and my heart breaks because I know he won’t come back. But I take comfort, as will countless readers for years to come, from the simple fact that his words will never leave us, and we can always come back to find them waiting for us. Still and always hot.