the night Max wore his wolf suit...

and tamed them with the magic trick of staring into all their yellow eyes without blinking once

I can't let it pass without comment, Maurice Sendak is dead. Just in this last week we've been re-reading Where The Wild Things Are, only this time J is reading the words himself instead of having me read them to him. We picked our favourite wild things (again) - mine is the one who looks like a cow and has human feet (!), J's is above.

Our favourite, favourite though, is tiny Nutshell Library book, Pierre, captioned below with the lines that make J laugh out loud every time.

They pulled the lion by the hair.
They hit him with the folding chair.

 I could try and eulogise but I'm sure others will do it better, instead I'll give you this fabulous quote from The Art of Maurice Sendak:

"Young children don't amble or saunter, they goose-step. Only Sendak noticed that. They seem to have no knees, the Sendak kids, or more probably they refuse to bend them - it's hard enough work just staying upright, maintaining your centre of gravity. And their creator was a child in the age of the European dictators; he's endowed his creations with a lesson learned, namely the use-value of clomping, making an outsized noise..."