10 Things About "Where the Wild Things Are" That Change Everything You Thought You Knew
There is plenty you don't know about the book that defined your childhood and the movie that gave you serious nostalgia.Â
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Sendak's mother used to call him "vilde chaya," when he misbehaved as a child, which translates to "wild animal."
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Director Spike Jonze said he wanted to make a movie about childhood, that wasn't necessarily for children.Â
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He wasn't sure why the book became so huge, and there was no convincing him to turn it into a series.Â
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However, he would do so voluntarily because he didn't like his mother's cooking.
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It's based on his life as a child in Brooklyn and his experiences with his eccentric parents.
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Bruno Bettelheim worried that the book would cause a fear of abandonment in children. He made this assertion without ever having read the book.
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As a child, Sendak found his Jewish relatives to be very bizarre. They would visit on weekends and "all say the same dumb things," he said. "How big you are, how fat you got, and you look so good we could eat you up."
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It was actually called "Where the Wild Horses Are." Author Maurice Sendak discovered that he couldn't actually draw horses and changed the name of the book.