Sailing Off from the Library to Where the Wild Things Are!

Book Name: Where the Wild Things Are
Author: Maurice Sendak
Number of Children: 18
Center: Avay-e-Mandegar Empowerment Center – Tehran

Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak is an incredible picture book. In each page, children experience the pleasure of a new discovery. The illustrations of the wild things are the most incredible of all. They are wild things that unlike their looks, are not scary at all. They can represent our childhood imaginary friends in the times of mischief. This delightful book has the capacity to engage children and is a good opportunity for attracting naughty ones to Reading Aloud.

While reading aloud, the joy, mischief, and boredom that was depicted in the book was completely relatable to children. They laughed upon hearing the story and seeing the illustrations and talked about their similar experiences.

Where the Wild Things Are Post-Reading Activities

In the post-reading activities, we made the masks of wild things and Max, the wildest of them all, as well. We made paper boats and drew trees to refine children’s fine motor skills. Then we performed the book as a play.

The performance was completely improvised. We had a lot of wild things: pink ones, green, beautiful, kind, happy, noisy, naughty and even bookworm wild things! We even had a tiny little wild thing who was quiet and kind, with a beautiful smile on her face. In this performance, we had wild things who talked and laughed, or stood by each other and posed so that we would take their pictures. Some wild things spun around, laughed and showed their terrible claws.

In this performance, we even had a teacher who was a very happy wild thing herself. She jumped around and laughed with the other wild things and captured those happy moments with her camera. There was an atmosphere of friendly connection and cooperation between children during the performance.

In the end, everybody had to sail back to their own homes. Exactly as the book implies, that nowhere is as safe and loving as home. A place where we hope there’s loving people and warm food waiting for us.

Children’s sound was echoing in the staircase. They were still playing the wild things…