Putting the 'I ' Back Into Being: Maurice Sendak's Exploration of Childhood Fears and Terror

Abstract: Recognized as arguably one of the most engaging and internationally the best selling, Maurice Sendak's picture book trilogy of 'Where the Wild Thing Are', 'In the Night Kitchen ' and 'Outside Over There ' is also recognized as being the most darkest in children's literature. Unintentionally intertextual, Sendak readily acknowledged that his work in general and this trilogy in particular was "colored with memories of village life in Poland, never actually experienced but passed on to me as a persuasive reality by my immigrant parents". While acknowledged but not explored by researchers, these texts also represent a visual representation of the psychological phenomenology of how children understand the concepts of fear, horror and terror. The latter point was a personal realization years after these texts had been published when it was pointed out to Sendak how similar his texts were to elements of his own childhood. While using all three texts in the previously mentioned trilogy, this paper focuses on the last in the series, Outside Over There, reputedly the darkest, most esoteric and the most symbolic. Using a transtextual approach in tandem with the 'Red Thread ' reader response framework this paper unpacks possible meanings of Sendak's pictorial subtext and how they form a transcultural underpinning of how children understand, relate to and deal with fear, horror and terror