In The Night Kitchen has been so historically controversial, comedian and television personality Stephen Colbert interviewed Sendak, and Colbert produced a copy of In The Night Kitchen with numerous circles cut out wherever Mickey’s genitals or buttocks were illustrated (Harvey). When she does notice it now, she just smiles and says, “He lost his clothes. Again, this speaks to my failings, not the book’s, but while I love Sendak, I will admit that In the Night Kitchen is not a book for everyone. To expedite the process of ordering a custom cake you can send along … Post was not sent - check your email addresses! Change ), You are commenting using your Google account. Then, ask the students if they noticed that Mickey was naked in parts of the story before the discussion of his nudity as a class. Ask them to think about how they feel about librarians, teachers, or students altering a book they want to read before they read it. Mickey isn’t sexualized AT ALL and, let’s be honest, most kids, thanks to diaper changes or older or younger siblings, have seen a baby or toddler naked before. He jumps out of the cake, covered in batter, and in to bread dough which he kneads in to the shape of an airplane. In The Night Kitchen. "Milk in the batter! Pair them up and have them identify terms on their partner’s strip, then ask them to try to combine the strips (or at least collaborate) to make an 8-panel strip. In the Night Kitchen (1987) - IMDb. . I first became aware of it thanks to its reputation as “the book with the naked kid” – the young hero, three-year-old Mickey, loses his … Wikimedia, 25 Oct. 2014. IN THE NIGHT KITCHEN. In the Night Kitchen is the classic story of Mickey's adventures in the bakers’ kitchen as they prepare our morning cake. “Maurice Sendak’s ‘In The Night Kitchen’ is More Offensive to Parents Than Kids.” The Stir. I’m the milk and the milk’s in me! For me, In the Night Kitchen is a PERFECT library book – it has the potential to be a big hit or a big miss, depending on your household, so being able to pilot it at your local library first before bringing it home is a very good thing. Building a Library: Finding the Right Books for Your Kid (Through Trial and Error), Maurice Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen, a 1970 picture book following a child’s romp through a surreal nocturnal bakery, is a weird book, but it’s up to your own personal interpretation whether it’s “delightfully weird” or “uncomfortably weird.”. (It’s an awesome museum.) CBLDF, 2014. Unpaginated. Maurice Sendak’s book In The Night Kitchen is a fantastical story that parents actually enjoy reading because of Sendak’s clever rhymes and other-worldly, yet relatable illustrations. Wikipedia - In the Night Kitchen Offers quick summary / overview and other basic information submitted by Wikipedia contributors who considers themselves "experts" in the topic at hand. by Tom B. Maurice Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen, a 1970 picture book following a child’s romp through a surreal nocturnal bakery, is a weird book, but it’s up to your own personal interpretation whether it’s “delightfully weird” or “uncomfortably weird.”. . It is not surprising, then, that the main reason the book is challenged is because of Mickey’s nudity. My husband forwarded this to me tonight where Maurice Sendak is being interviewed on the Colbert Report. A challenged book is one that is restricted, where a student needs a parent’s permission or even their actual parent to check out the book; a banned book is completely banned from existing in the library of that K-12 establishment. 3 Nov. 2013. CafeMom, 25 Jan. 2012. With Peter Schickele. Not to mention ,every child can relate to wanting cake for breakfast! Keeps us moving forward on our toes. I’m Mickey! When we first read the book, my daughter snorted and giggled at seeing Mickey naked for the first time, but, every subsequent time we’ve read it, his nudity has almost never come up. He encourages us to embrace the (unspoken) fear of night-time and face uncanny and surreal happenings in the dark. It offers an interesting censorship history because its audience censored the book in some cases, but so did states – outright banning the book’s presence in numerous libraries nationwide. There he meets three bakers who stir him in to cake batter, thinking he is milk. Maurice Sendak’s book In The Night Kitchen is a fantastical story that parents actually enjoy reading because of Sendak’s clever rhymes and other-worldly, yet relatable illustrations. The poem “After Reading Mickey in the Night Kitchen for the Third Time Before Bed” written by Rita Dove and read by Michael DuBon. There's much going on in this poem: the complicated, biologically determined mother-daughter relationship; part of the genesis of body image; how some families do "sex education"; the vulnerability of the female body that teaches women to move about the world in very different ways from men. Moreover, child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim told Ladies Home Journal in March, 1969, "The basic anxiety of a child is desertion. At night is general meaning all nights: at night I sleep; at night he dreams. Using one of the paneled double page spreads, discuss basic graphic novel terminology as a class – including panel, gutter, splash page, double-page spread, and bleed frames. borrow it, Teaching the book as a graphic novel takes away from its controversy and places more focus on the literary merit of the book based on its story, rhymes and illustrations. But at the same time, this city of brownstones and Art Deco towers is the Night Kitchen. In summer is general and refers to every summer: I go on holiday in summer; I don't work in summer. However, ‘in the night’ is much less common and is used to mean ‘during the night’. In The Night Kitchen has won multiple awards, including the 1971 Caldecott Medal, Outstanding Children’s Book of 1970, and Best Book of 1970 (“Maurice Sendak”). Outside the buildings were dark, save for two lights in an apartment block opposite. Night Kitchen, Tel Aviv: See 1,723 unbiased reviews of Night Kitchen, rated 4.5 of 5 on Tripadvisor and ranked #7 of 1,758 restaurants in Tel Aviv. “Maurice Sendak.” Wikipedia. A Night Kitchen dessert is the ultimate bite of deliciousness that your family and friends will always remember. and The Elephant and Piggie Series by Mo Willems, Next post: Things to Avoid: Personalized Kids’ Books. However, on a personal level, I find reading In the Night Kitchen out loud a strangely jarring experience. He uses the airplane to get in to the extremely large milk bottle sitting in the Night Kitchen. Other readers of the story see the milk bottle as “phallic,” which offends them because of the author’s openly homosexual lifestyle (Velez). and The Elephant and Piggie Series by Mo Willems, Things to Avoid: Personalized Kids’ Books, 1.21 GW – Books My Kid Will Read in the Future, Anita Silvey's Children's Book-a-Day Almanac, UK Guardian's Building a Children's Library. There have been censorship cases against the book in Illinois, New Jersey, Texas, and Minnesota (“Maurice Sendak”). In the Night Kitchen. To conclude, Maurice Sendak’s In The Night Kitchen is a wonderful fantasy story that is quite relatable for children who have vivid dreams. A Journal of the Minnesota Council of Teachers of English, [pdf version here: Cattrysse-Sendak’s In The Night Kitchen]. It’s a kind of weird that I’ve never fully figured out and, at some level, it makes me uncomfortable. Some individuals (librarians, students, teachers, who knows) drew or painted pants or a diaper on Mickey because his nudity made them feel uncomfortable (Harvey). In the Night Kitchen is an extraordinary work of imaginative genius. 3 Nov. 2014. funny, It’s not fair for me to fault him for my inability to hone in on the perfect inflection for his story. ( Log Out / On reconsideration, however, this behavior should be recognized for what it is: an act of censorship by mutilation rather than by obvious suppression,” (“Case Study,” emphasis added). I’d wager ten bucks that any parent who ever tried to have In the Night Kitchen removed from their local library laughed like crazy whenever their two-year-old did a pre-bath naked run through their house, particularly if it was in front of company, so it’s ridiculous to try to turn Mickey’s nakedness into anything perverse or predatory. Does that bother them, or is it okay? We are known for moist cakes, “Best of Philly” brownies, and sinful sticky buns. In the Night Kitchenis a popular and controversial children's picture book, written and illustrated by Maurice Sendak, and first published in 1970. We bake cake and nothing’s the matter!" Velez, Adriana. It was an instant favorite. He falls out of bed, out of his pajamas, and in to the Night Kitchen. "Milk in the batter! My daughter spreads her legs to find her vagina: hairless, this mistaken bit of nomenclature is what a stranger cannot touch without her yelling. She thinks it’s funny and strange, she loves pouring over the little details in the backgrounds of the Night Kitchen, and she has fond memories of visiting Philadelphia’s Please Touch Kids’ Museum where she played on huge reproductions of scenes from Night Kitchen and Where the Wild Things Are. Change ), You are commenting using your Facebook account. And in "In the Night Kitchen," the main character, Mickey, turns up back in his bed safe after his own wild adventures in a giant bowl of cake batter. Web. It was written and illustrated by Maurice Sendak, who claims in interviews he doesn’t write for children, even though all of his works are approachable for young readers. The story is about a boy who falls asleep until he hears a noise that jolts him awake. Mickey wakes up in the middle of the night to discover the night bakers in the kitchen making cake. In Sendak’s picture book, a young boy named Mickey falls out of his clothes as he travels through his dreams to the magical kitchen … Explain that these definitions are examples of state censorship because books are restricted or banned by winning a legal case through the government. The story ends, “And that’s why, thanks to Mickey we have cake every morning” (Sendak, 40). I greased an 8” cake pan, grated four lemon rinds and rubbed them with 2/3 cup of sugar. The bakers in the night kitchen need more milk for their batter, but then Mickey falls into the cake! To be sent to bed alone is one desertion, and without food is second desertio… Learn more about Laura Cattrysse on our Contributors page. In 1985, “In the Night Kitchen” was challenged at the Cunningham Elementary School in Beloit, WI because the book was believed to desensitize children to nudity. He tells them that he is not milk, but he can get some milk for their batter! ( Log Out / Know a good book that any kid should have in their library? I'm also writing kidlit book recommendations and articles for an amazing site called. In The Night Kitchen also presents a more unusual form of censorship, more hands-on than state censorship. If you ask her to tell you what the story of In the Night Kitchen is, she can’t really verbalize it, but she knows, without a doubt, that she likes it. the bakers sing. http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/406796/january-24-2012/grim-colberty-tales-with-maurice-sendak-pt–1?xrs=share_copy, Previous post: Happy Pig Day! Sendak's classic comic fantasy of Mickey's adventures in the night kitchen tells us how we get our morning cake. A deep, poignant meditation on life, death, and the concept of belonging. I like that it’s not a sentimental, sing-song nursery rhyme. When something happens between the evening and the morning, you can use both ‘at night’ and ‘in the night’. 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