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| Page 5Source: Maurice Sendak |
I remember very little about my
reactions to this page as a child, which is understandable given that it serves
mostly as transition. I wonder a great deal about Sendak's choice of jams and
other kitchen objects, whether they are from his memory, or imagination, or
something else. I do want to point out the visual aspect of the text
"Mickey Oven" which evokes Disney, alluding to a darker side,
perhaps, of that other children's favorite, demonstrating with just a subtle
symbol that most children's fantasy is grimmer than it appears. The rhyming
and compound word "Mickey-cake" seem to come straight out of the
pat-a-cake rhyme game, reclaiming the excitement of a child at having a cake, a
real life physical object, marked with the name that signifies their identity
and in that marking becomes a part of the universe that is cordoned off just
for them. That world in which the cakes are all for you, brought into existence
by singing games, is the real-life analogue of the Night Kitchen, that
exotic but almost-close-enough-to-touch world where bakers make cakes for the morning,
cakes that are in fact, not only for you and named for you, but made of you,
too.
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| Page 6 Maurice Sendak |
Oddly, I don't remember this page
at all. Reading it now felt like reading it for the first time, and this first
time reader thought, look how empowered Mickey is! There is this fanciful world
in which the cakes are for you, but what if that's not what you want? What if
the conventional path laid out, in which things (clothes coming off, falling
into another world, being folded into a batter) simply happen to you, without
your say. What if, even though, because this is fantasy, you are delighted at
all of these lovely things, and there's nothing wrong with them at all, you
want to act? It remind me greatly of Knight's Castle, by Edward Eager, in which
the protagonist children become part of the world of their knights and dolls,
and occasionally things go quite dangerously awry. The way to get out of the
danger is to remind yourself that it is fantasy and not real, and , there is a
scene in Knight's castle in which Ann, the youngest child, petulantly cries out
the words that end the magic, and while the other children are upset with her,
it is her way of asserting herself and her power over the events transpiring
that affect her. Similarly, Mickey is defiant, changing the course of the
story, disturbing the calm, nightly patterns of the bakers, and proudly
stating, "I'm not the milk and the milk's not me! I'm Mickey!" There
will be no denial of identity in Maurice Sendak's book, not like the polite
children in most children's literature, who could be replaced easily by their
counterparts in similar formulaic books. No, Mickey knows who he is, and
encourages readers, by example, to know who they are, too, and to shout it
unashamedly.
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| Page 7 Maurice Sendak |
This I remember. This I remember as
being a splendid set of instructions for any life task, as if if you only could
pound and pull and work enough, you could build anything, even a plane made of
bread dough. It's important, I think, that the bread dough was simply lying
around; it emphasizes the completeness of the Night Kitchen. It is not only a
vehicle for the story, but an entire world with characters and objects we
haven't necessarily heard about yet. In any fantasy story, the protagonist
meeting new characters from the world reminds the reader just how complex it
is, just how real it is, just how much there is to discover. It allows the
reader to consider the world as one to discover, rather than to create, a
beautiful fiction (since authors and readers do, in fact, together construct
these worlds) that lets us truly fall into the magic of fantasy.
Mickey's facial expressions are important here. He begins, as
he has been most of the story, idyllically tranquil, then
becomes frustrated and scared in the third panel. That's not
mentioned in the text at all, so we have to divine it for ourselves, noting
the brief uncertainty before sheer determination and talent set in.
After all, Mickey is no conventional protagonist. He is
not serendipitously perfect. He is in a world that is not of his
creation, and though his intent to escape is pure, he's not quite sure how to
do it. Soon enough, though, he devises a plan, and executes it. All the while
the background changes, showing us more and more of this strange world, even if
it doesn't quite accord with spatial physics.
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| Page 8 Source: Maurice Sendak |
And he does it! He succeeds in his
crazy plan and manages to fly, fulfilling the imaginations of countless
children. Two things of note on this page: the plane is neither purely nor
fully functional. That is to say, Mickey wants the plane to "look[]
ok", to have a decorative star, simply because he wants it
there. We notice that the mobile on the first page has something that could be
a star on it, but on the body instead of the wing. Secondly, the plane drops
pieces of dough as it flies, because Mickey isn't perfect, and neither are his
creations. What are a few pieces missing when you've just made a plane out of
nothing but bread dough and will?
The next page doesn't make any sense except in the context of
the flow of the plot, so I'll stop here for now. This is really great fun, and
I hope my readers (the few that there are) are enjoying it as well. It's so
nice to reminisce about great books.
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