A
Title: In the Night Kitchen
Author: Maurice Sendak
Publication Info: Red Fox; New Ed edition July 5, 2001
ISBN: 0099417472
Genre: Top 100 Banned Books
Submitted by Naomi Libicki
When our copy arrived, I found the following stamp inside the front cover: Windham Public Library: WITHDRAWN.
“What huh?” I thought. And then, “Oh yeah . . . the penis.”
In the Night Kitchen opens and closes with its protagonist in bed, wearing his pajamas. At part of the transition from this mundane scene to the surreal world where the main action of the book takes place, Mickey falls out of his clothes. He later acquires a sort of flight suit made of cake batter, but for much of the action, he is naked. And rather than using concealing props and postures, Maurice Sendak simply draws him, little-boy penis and all.
The otherworld that Mickey journeys to when he is awoken by bumps in the night is the Night Kitchen, a city with jam jars and coffee canisters for buildings. He is menaced by three fat, good-humored giants in chef’s outfits, who mix him into a cake batter and put him in the oven. However, he escapes, and builds an airplane out of bread dough to harvest milk from the Milky Way. Once this ingredient is obtained, the bakers complete their cake, and Mickey returns to bed.
You know how sometimes you go back and read or watch something you loved as a child, and spend the entire time cringing? And then there are times when you go back, and it’s just . . . perfect.
This is one of those. The city of the Night Kitchen is charming – it’s even got elevated trains made out of bread loaves. The character designs are also spot-on; Mickey is wonderfully expressive, and the jolly, be-mustachio’ed appearance of the bakers – they look a little like the Mario Brothers actually – helps tip the tone of the book from scary to surreal. There are also bits of rhyme that have stayed with you for as long as I can remember. Mickey’s milk harvesting song, for instance : “I’m in the milk and the milk’s in me. God bless milk and God bless me!” Or the chant of the bakers as they mix up the cake batter: “Milk in the batter! Milk in the batter! We bake cake! And nothing’s the matter!”
At this point I should really list some negatives, but I can’t think of any. Well, maybe one. Maurice Sendak is Jewish, and Mickey seems to some extent to share his creator’s cultural background: He calls his parents Mama and Papa, the bakers use kosher salt decades before Alton Brown’s Good Eats, and there’s no lard or other non-kosher ingredients to be found in the Night Kitchen. So why is Mickey uncircumcised?
I loved “Mickey” as a child, and so did all the kids I’ve read it to. I know tons of people object to the penis, though—my brother complained about my mom reading it to his 2 year old boy, even though he think it is fine for the toddler to watch R-rated films with sex and violence. I don’t get it… what is it that people find so upsetting about a drawing of a naked baby?!
I remember being read In The Night Kitchen by our school librarian (I went to an extremely liberal private school) and I was determined to find it for my girls, because I though Mickey’s arrival and activity in the night kitchen was nothing short of sublime.
I’m happy to say that the Please Touch Museum of Philadelphia has two exhibits devoted to Sendak (one for Where the Wild Things Are and the other for Night Kitchen). It was there that I found our copy a year ago…and I only wish they had it in hardback, because it is beginning to fall apart from the repeated readings. My girls love it and I still think it’s magical.
Wow…and my spam protect is “night99”.
We have this book, and I find it creepy. My children find it creepy. They don’t like the fact that the menacing bakers try to add the boy to the pie. It isn’t the penis.
thanks for the review, i’ll go look for this in the library.
btw – our library stamps ‘withdrawn’ on all the books it sells due to age or low borrowing rates, simply as a way to distinguish from its ‘active’ books – since externally, they still look alike with the call-number labels etc.
Oh gosh, this brings back memories. I loved this book probably more than my daughter did—the intense dream-like atmosphere and the packets of baking stuff that become buildings.
Just because the library withdrew the book from their collection doesn’t mean they did so because of a complaint about the penis. Maybe the library got a brand new copy in and discarded the old one? Maybe they had 5 other copies of the book and circulation numbers didn’t support keeping every single one?
“uncircumcised” always makes me cringe. I think “intact” would be more accurate.
Just sayin’.
THAT’S why it’s on the list. I saw it when I was looking for books on the list I’d read and couldn’t figure out why.
Obviously the nakedness didn’t make an impression on me when I read it to the kidlets many moons ago.
Sarabeth, children’s literature and the way we interact with children has a strong undercurrent of creepy. Kids like to be scared (in a properly safe environment, of course).
The notion of eating children is a very old one in tales (Hansel and Gretel?). Even in ordinary interaction, it’s part of our cultural heritage. How many people say of children, “You’re so cute I could eat you right up!” How many parents play eating games with their babies, going “yum yum yum” on their toes or fingers or nose?
Which isn’t to say your dislike of the book is misplaced. I’m just pointing out why it might not be creepy for other people.
———-
On an unrelated note, I wonder why anyone would object to a depiction of a naked kid in a story intended for other children. Do they not want girls seeing it? Do they think it might turn boys gay?
I mean, it’s not as if five year old boys don’t know they have penises.
shuzluva:
My copy is hardback. It’s used, though, so I don’t know if they’re printing it in hardback now.
Maya, Wendy:
A lot of the books we bought were from libraries, and none of the others had “withdrawn” stamps in them. Still, different libraries have different procedures, so maybe you’re right . . . it still makes for a good anecdote though.
I always thought the boy being uncut, was an inside joke, considering the creators surname. The ‘Sendak’ is the one who does the snip-snip… sorry to offend anyone who might find the word ‘uncut’, traumatizing. 0_o.
[no, “Anderson” is not the name I was born under.]
((^_^))
Tina,
No, the mohel is the one who does the cutting. The sendak is the one who holds the baby while the cutting is going on.
While the mohel is a trained professional, the sendak is usually a relative or honored friend of the parents. This is why the “Godfather” movies and books are called in Hebrew “Hasendak.”
This book is still very much available in hardcover. The ISBN is 0060266686.
It’s certainly available on amazon, though I also recommend checking your local indie bookstores (Sorry, I have to mention it. I’m employed by an indie. We’re the good guys.)to see if they have it on hand. (If you’re in an area with a local indie. I grew up in a place where even the closest B&N was 3 hours away.)
E, Since I wasn’t the person who read the book to the kids the first time, I know it wasn’t my own impression of the kid being baked in a pie that colored my children’s perception.
Yeah, I know we as parents and adults like to scare children and creep them out. We didn’t like this book, the art (weird, because we like other Sendak books), or the way it made us feel while reading it. I’d had no exposure to it as a child, which may be why I’m not so enthusiastic about it.
And, uh, I’m not one of those moms who pretended to eat my children’s fingers and toes. Sort of makes sense, huh?
Naomi: Thanks! I wasn’t sure. ^_^ I knew the words Sendak had something to do with that whole situation…
…and yes, being Polish/Jewish and from NYC doesn’t give me a masters-degree in Judaism. LOL! Frankly, I’m not asham-ed.
Maybe he just did it on purpose?
Maybe you find the book creepy because it’s about the Holocaust. No, it really is. Hence the oven, the Hitler mustaches on the bakers, the “purity” represented by the milk. I first encountered the book a few months ago while taking a teacher education class, and I found it unpleasant and creepy even before the professor told us what M.S. had in mind when he wrote it.
Julie, that could certainly be it. Now, I’m more creeped out by it!
Julie:
What?
Far be it from me to deny the validity of anyone’s interpretation, but what evidence do you or your professor have that that particular interpretation was the one that Maurice Sendak had in mind? Because personally I’m not seeing it.
My sister, who is a bigger Maurice Sendak geek than I am, informs me that the character design for the bakers is based on Oliver Hardy. And a quick Googl Image search will confirm that the resemblance is much closer than the resemblance between the bakers and Hitler.
I wish I had paid more attention in class now. I believe that the professor presented the Holocaust analogy as a fact, as if Sendak had explicitly said or written that that was his intention. And now I’ve read a bunch of articles about his life- I just did a google search- and it does seem like the Holocaust loomed large in his life- most of his mother’s family died in concentration camps while he and his immediate family were safe in Brooklyn. I can’t think of a reason why he would use an image of Oliver Hardy in his books- that doesn’t seem to fit with his themes or interests- but a distorted image of Hitler, set in a confused, dreamlike, childish view of the Holocaust seems more like something he would produce. I believe there are also details in the pictures that lend themselves to this interpretation- but I don’t have the book in front of me to tell you what they are. Helpful, I know. Sorry.
I really found this book unpleasant even before the Holocaust connection, and it had nothing to do with the nudity, I just found the whole night kitchen scenario…menacing.
Kinda late to the party here…
but the giant bakers? All modeled on Oliver Hardy.