[Repost] Where the Wild Things Are (Parent-Child Reading Notes Part 1)

O(∩_∩)O Thank you! It’s always nice to hear peo­ple praise me behind my back, espe­cial­ly when it comes to this book I’m so obsessed with, I’ve read it over and over again, and I still can’t get enough of it. We are so lucky to have and share this book ^_^Orig­i­nal address:Going to Where the Wild Things Are (Par­ent-Child Read­ing Notes 1)author:Rice Rab­bit

I remem­ber Octo­ber 8th so clear­ly because it was the day after my father left us for work. My grand­moth­er was still away vis­it­ing rel­a­tives that day, so it was just me and my father left at home.

From that day on, Gui began cry­ing and throw­ing tantrums for no appar­ent rea­son. He’d cry and whine over toys he could­n’t play with, he’d cry and rage over the slight­est bump, and he’d throw a tantrum over the slight­est dis­plea­sure. It was the first time in all my life I’d ever encoun­tered such a sit­u­a­tion, and I was com­plete­ly bewil­dered. After the ini­tial shock, I quick­ly began to think of ways to deal with him: coax­ing, guid­ing, sooth­ing, the cold shoul­der, rejec­tion. I tried every­thing, soft and hard, but noth­ing worked. I was mired in deep depres­sion and pan­ic.

A sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion occurred again after two or three weeks. After search­ing for var­i­ous rea­sons, I final­ly admit­ted that this was the leg­endary ter­ri­ble two
Of course, what I want to talk about in this arti­cle is not the emo­tion­al cop­ing method, but a pic­ture book that made me redis­cov­er it at that time: “Where the Wild Things Are”

This book has been in our fam­i­ly for at least six months. We’ve read it a few times, spo­rad­i­cal­ly, but nei­ther Tur­tle nor I felt par­tic­u­lar­ly moved. Amidst a sea of col­or­ful pic­ture books, I sim­ply dis­missed it as a con­fes­sion from a naughty child, nev­er delv­ing into it in detail. I won­der if we had­n’t hap­pened to reread it at this par­tic­u­lar time, per­haps we would have missed the chance to fall in love with it.

Lat­er, when I researched the book online, I found that many par­ents and read­ers report­ed that it was a bit scary and that their chil­dren might be a lit­tle intim­i­dat­ed at first—something I had­n’t con­sid­ered. The lit­tle tur­tle nev­er showed the slight­est hint of fear, despite being a very timid child. What sur­prised me even more was how he almost imme­di­ate­ly iden­ti­fied him­self with the beast, becom­ing its spokesper­son or even a minor pos­ses­sor.

When I read it for the first time, I read: Max let them (the beasts) go to bed and did not give them din­ner. He turned around in pan­ic and shout­ed: Give! Give!
Every time he read this, he would empha­size: “Give them din­ner!” as if he were care­ful­ly tak­ing care of his wild ani­mal pets.
Then, he named the five mon­sters that appeared in the text: “Grand­pa Beast”, “Grand­ma”, “Dad”, “Mom” and “Baby”.

The first sen­tence he pla­gia­rized from the book was­n’t “You beast!” or “I’m going to eat you!” or “The beasts are mak­ing trou­ble!” It was “We love you so much… Please don’t leave…” As he chased the cat around the house with this bark, I felt like I was wit­ness­ing the book in action. Although he lat­er incor­po­rat­ed more and more of the tex­t’s lan­guage into our home, I still remem­ber that first sen­tence. It was then that I seri­ous­ly con­sid­ered how much these beasts held in his heart.

In my eyes, those who were once just mis­chie­vous chil­dren became, in his eyes, indi­vid­u­als with rich emo­tions and flesh and blood. In that wild place, there was end­less free­dom to unleash, to release all sorts of pent-up emo­tions under the moon­light, to do as he pleased, to laugh loud­ly. Per­haps his lit­tle heart was already long­ing for all of this. More­over, in times of lone­li­ness and hunger, there was still the end­less tol­er­ance of a moth­er’s love, and the din­ner his moth­er had pre­pared for him, still warm.

At that time, the baby was only one week and ten months old. Although he could speak and express him­self sim­ply, there was a huge world in his heart that he could not express. If it were not for this book, I think it might take me “night and day, sev­er­al weeks, and a whole year” to enter into it.

Final­ly, I com­mend and com­mend Aji­a’s tru­ly impres­sive trans­la­tion. It’s nei­ther obscure nor dif­fi­cult to read; it’s catchy and deeply engag­ing, mak­ing it a per­fect read for chil­dren. It’s one of those rare books that will keep chil­dren, even after lis­ten­ing to the entire sto­ry and turn­ing the last page, still sit­ting qui­et­ly for a moment, savor­ing the expe­ri­ence, turn­ing to hug me, and ask­ing for the next book.

Now, not only me, but also the lit­tle tur­tle can almost repeat the con­tent of the sto­ry word for word:
That night, Max put on his wolf coat and ran wild around the house.
It nev­er ends.
His moth­er called him, “You beast!”
Max said, “I’m going to eat you!”
His moth­er did­n’t give him din­ner and told him to go to bed.
That night, a for­est grew in Max’s room
Long and long…
Vines crawl­ing all over the ceil­ing
The four walls turned into a wilder­ness
A small boat named “Max” float­ed on the sea
He set sail, and passed a night and a day
Many weeks passed
Almost a whole year passed
Go where the wild ani­mals are.
When he came to the place where wild beasts were,
They roared hor­ri­bly and bared their teeth.
Show­ing scary eyes and extend­ing scary claws
Max yelled, “Stop!”
He cast a spell over them—
Star­ing at their yel­low eyes with­out blink­ing
They were so fright­ened that they called him the wildest beast.
They asked him to be the king of the beasts.
“Now,” Max yelled, “the wild beasts begin!”
(Three con­sec­u­tive pages of noisy scenes)
“Stop!” said Max. He told the beasts to go to sleep.
No din­ner for them. Max, the king of beasts, felt very lone­ly.
He want­ed to be some­where where some­one loved him the most.
From far and wide in the wilder­ness came the aro­ma of deli­cious food.
So he decid­ed not to be the king of this place any­more.
But the beasts cried, “Oh, please don’t go—
We’re going to eat you—we love you so much!”
Max said, “No!”
The beasts roared hor­ri­bly and bared their teeth
With ter­ri­ble eyes and ter­ri­ble claws,
Max board­ed the small boat “Max” and waved good­bye to them.
A whole year passed
Many weeks passed
After a day
Back to the night before he set out,
He found din­ner pre­pared for him in the room
It’s still hot.