Hey everyone! I know this is kind of after the fact but I found the critical analysis on Where the Wild Things Are to be quite interesting. As part of my response I talked about dominence and power relating to eye contact and how American society holds eye contact to such high importance. I thought it was interesting how the wild thing's eyes were yellow which made them stand out to me and signified importance. I related this to what Max said about how he "did a magic trick" on them by staring into their eyes without blinking which was a challenge of dominance where the weaker one will look away first... like in the animal world where looking into another animals eyes signifies a challenge of power.
I dont think i will ever look at these childrens books the same after this class!
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I agree with you, Jessica. Doing the critical analysis has shown me how to read deeper into these children's books. The scene you are referring too about him taking dominance is something many of us over look when reading to children. I believe we are to learn the "real" meaning of the book. All the children's book seems to have an underlying message the author wants the adult reader to get out of it. I am enjoying looking at the different books in these many different roles.
Yea, I must agree as well, I remember reading or looking at this book when I was a little kid. And when I 1st saw that we were going to be reading it for this class, I couldn't remember for the life of me what it was about at all. I just sort of remembered the pictures of the "Wild things" were sort of scary. Re reading and analyzing it as an adult made me realize how much more is going on these simple books that I probably otherwise would have never thought to read again or think about critically about. Its crazy to think that every child book you read as a child has deeper meaning behind it, that we are now able discover now that we can think critically about them.
Isn't amazing how profound some of these children's books are?? I had no idea there is such a large amount of themes and underlying ideas behind such simple language. Your critical analysis on eye contact in "Where the Wild Things Are" is very interesting. My discussion group mentioned this as well and its a very fascinating topic which can also be related to different culture groups, etc. props for probing so deeply :)
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