In the Night Kitchen

Sendak, M. (1970). In the night kitchen. New York, NY: Harper & Row.

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Out of the fifty books I have read so far for this class, Maurice Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen was by far my least favorite.  In it, a young boy named Mickey hears a racket in the night and falls naked through the dark, past the moon, past his parents sleeping, into the light of the night kitchen into a bowl of batter.  Three chefs start mixing the batter, and for some reason they think Mickey is milk, but he jumps out of the dough, makes a plane out of the dough, and tells the chefs he will get milk the Mickey way.  He flies over the Milky Way and the night kitchen and dives into a big container of milk.  He swims to the top and pours milk from his cup into the batter below.  They bake the cake, and Mickey cries “cock-a-doodle-doo” and slides back down the milk container into his bed.  The book concludes by saying, “Thanks to Mickey we have cake every morning” (Sendak, 1970).

I am not shocked at all that critics disliked the illustrations in this book as they show Mickey’s penis and testicles several times.  Challengers of this book say that it contains morally problematic child nudity, and some even claim that sexual innuendo is present.  Aside from the nudity, the artwork is good, but it baffles me that this book has won multiple awards, including the 1971 Caldecott honor award.  Books do not receive this award for their content; it is based solely on their illustrations.  So, how could a book containing child nudity win this award? 

But other than the illustrations, In the Night Kitchen makes very little sense.  It is probably one of the strangest and most disturbing stories I have ever read.  It is difficult to understand why Mickey is in the night kitchen, why the chefs think he is milk, why he is consistently naked, and why he is the reason they have cake every morning.  In addition, Sendak has been quoted to say that the story dealt with things that happen after a child goes to sleep*.  I hope I never find out what he means by that exactly.  

*http://www.npr.org NPR interview originally aired 30 October 2003 and repeated 12 September 2008