In The Night Kitchen

I'm a big fan of books.  Yes, you know.  I'm walking on a cloud these days because we unpacked my LAST BOX OF BOOKS in two years, thanks to a home that is ours (so to speak) and not a corporation who would panic and call a meeting if I so much as moved a salt and pepper shaker, much less stack my books the wrong way.  My luvah bought me a huge craigslist bookshelf that was appallingly ugly until we put all the books in it and now, hopefully, the books are all you see.  


I like my books somewhat willy nilly.  I'll never alphabetize them for the following reasons:  1. No one would replace the title correctly  and 2. They look better grouped according to genre  and 3. The ones belonging to itty-bitties go on the bottom where their jam sticky hands can access them better and the grown up ones with questionable love scenes or random acts of violence go up top where my jam sticky hands can access them better.  


About a year or two ago, I made a resolution.  I don't make resolutions so this was nifty for me.  You ready for it?  Here it is: I will never say no to a child who asks me to read to him/her.  Even if I'm doing twenty eleventy things and my  hair is on fire, I will say yes and crack open that book.  I'm hoping this will reverse the rest of the bad mommying I've done over the years...you think?


So...we bring you a favorite around these parts (not as beloved as Socks For Supper, the last book we shared with you here) that was recently rescued from its life of captivity and exile in a brown box:


In The Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak.

Being good ol' Maurice (ha!  Beauty and the Beast! ahem. Sorry.  I digressed into Disney for a minute) it is very similar in style to Where the Wild Things Are.  A boy goes to bed and has a strange adventure, only Mickey's makes Max's look tame and domesticated.

Oh look.  Some of my pictures did a head stand.  How odd.  Well, frankly it'd be much easier for me if you'd just turn your head ever so slightly than it would be to make me actually take these off now and start over.  Believe me.

So, anyway, Mickey falls through some kind of space and time continuum and runs into some fat and happy bakers who end up baking him into cake.

Mostly Moose goes for this book cuz there's a lot of gratuitous nudity.  And anytime there's nekkedness involved, a small manchild is gonna be there.

I love the red nosed bakers.

He escaped a run in with a loaf of bread.
Whew.

Then he falls in some milk.  And naturally his clothes fall off again.  Cuz that's what happens fourteen times per day when you are a small manchild.

Don't think about a boy being in milk that will later be used to bake something.  We all know what little boys do in the bath water that involves the golden arches and making a homemade jacuzzi.

Eventually, Mickey gets out of that strange dream land, shakes off his bread crumbs and hollers COCK*A*DOODLEDOO!  We don't know why.  Again, boys.


It's a classic.  Read to your poppets and muppets and small menchild.  You'll be glad you did.


P.S.  Can we all sing a rousing verse of Reading Rainbow now?  Puhleeze?  You know you want to...


Butterfly in the sky...
...I can go twice as high...
Are butterflies big readers?  Don't know.  But if PBS and the exuberant man with the funny headband on his eyes says yes, then who I am to disagree?