To call “Where the Wild Things Are” a beloved children’s book is an understatement. For many, the Maurice Sendak classic was as treasured as a favorite toy or blankie, a part of one’s childhood that could never be forgotten or replaced. Like many of its kind, the book is only ten sentences long, but the story it tells is much deeper than most children can find the words to explain, even if they understand it perfectly.

The upcoming Spike Jonze film adaptation has been the subject of much discussion, hype, and controversy in the past year or so. For a while, it looked like the film might be canned because it was “too dark” to appeal to the target demographic. Francis Spufford, in his book The Child That Books Built, calls the source material “one of the very few picture books to make an entirely deliberate, and beautiful, use of the psychoanalytic story of anger.” It’s hard to avoid dipping your toe into darkness when you’re telling such a story.

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