Mommy? Maurice Sendak's monstrous kids' pop-up book
The coolest thing about your kid's first Christmas is that you get to watch her unwrap all the amazing kiddy treasures that your friends and family found. It was a fantastic haul this year, no doubt about it, and my favorite was Mommy?, a 2006 pop-up book by Maurice "Where the Wild Things Are" Sendak that I'm thinking of keeping for myself.
Mummy? is a practically wordless, six-page popup that follows the travails of a little boy who's looking for his mother in a castle full of monsters. The left panel shows junior saying "Mommy?" and the right panel shows a leering monster; flip it up and see how the boy has defeated it. Mommy?'s dimensionality is fabulous -- the monsters explode in all directions, portrayed in fabulous grisly style that's a cross between Big Daddy Roth and Marc Davis's Haunted Mansion ghouls.
The flip-up right panels showing the monsters' comeuppance are witty, marvellously engineered, and deeply satisfying. The ending -- the Bride of Frankenstein bursting through the door, saying, "Baby!" -- is a great touch. This is the kind of papercraft you can feel good about giving to a kid (even if you don't want to part with it).
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Here's the thing about pop-up books, though, Cory--and you may have discovered this already: the speed of a striking cobra or a pouncing jaguar looks glacial next to the speed at which a young child can wreck a pop-up book, even if they're on your lap and you are watching their hands like a hawk.
Eeeeh. I can tell you from experience that you'd better get good with sticky tape as you'll be doing lots of mending. :)
Sendak wrote two of my favourite books as a child; the classic Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen; both of which include rich imaginative stories, and similarly beautiful aesthetics.
The importance of reading with children should never be under-estimated. It's great to see that he's still making imaginative books for kids.
@ #3: In the Night Kitchen is wonderful! It has been a family favorite in my house for years. My kids are 15 and 17 now, but can still be heard occasionally shouting "milk in the batter" while cooking in the kitchen.
Yes, pop-up books can a problem and tear, but my nieces have this book and absolutely LOVE it. I especially like it when they actually share the book with me and I can admire the work that went into it.
we went ahead and picked up Birdscapes - not really a kids book at $50 - but my toddler was sick last week and spent most of her time on my lap with this book.
Jeez, Cory, how about a spoiler alert?! (just kidding! :-)
By me, "Where the Wild Things Are" and "In the Night Kitchen" are standard gifts to all friends and family members having a first baby. Been doing so for at least 25 years.
The best part is that most people give clothes as gifts for newborns so this is different and very unlikely to be duplicated which saves the new parents the need to take it back for an exchange.
The bad part is that some recipients fail to understand why it's such a great gift until their little one is about 20 months old or so.
I love pop up books and Maurice Sendak. This will definitely be a buy for the nursery bookshelf.
This is one of the greatest pop-up books ever made. Although I'd never give it to a kid. I bought my nieces pop-up books and the characters that popped up were all headless and limbless an hour later.
This looks totally awesome, I wonder if my niece would like it.
-abs is forever grateful to whichever BB-er linked him into the Sardine in space stories, which his nephew just loved, but alas his nephew might be getting too old for this one . . . . thankfully his niece is still only 2 so this could be Pure Win
My children's librarian sister gave this to my now six-year-old son last year, and he LOVES it. As he was learning to read, he had a lot of fun "reading" this one to me (it only has two words!). Our copy is in great shape -- his default setting in his daily life is "Tasmanian devil," but he treats this book with great care. Well, so far, anyway.
Mommy? Are you my mommy? Please let me in, mommy.
mommy is a monster next on oprah
woo hoo! i have this. it's so cool!...
Wow. I don't have any kinds, and I want this book. I'm a big Maurice Sendak fan. I grew up on Where the wild things are and learned my ABCs from Alagators all around. Sendak both was inspired by and inspired two other favorite authors/illustrators of mine, Windsor McCay and Mercer Mayer respectively. ("One monster after another" is my favorite by Mayer.)
the american version of this makes no sense.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mummy-Maurice-Sendak-Arthur-Yorinks/dp/0439943183
@#17, AVRAAMOV: Why, what's the difference?