Banned Books Week (and the naked Mickey!)

September 25 to October 2 is Banned Books Week, an annual event that celebrates the freedom to read.

Spearheaded by the American Library Association, the celebration of Banned Books Week emphasizes intellectual freedom, “the freedom to access information and express ideas, even if the information and ideas might be considered unorthodox or unpopular.”

Growing up in a Catholic household, even with my all-girl Catholic schooling, I was lucky that I was never restricted from reading anything, but I can only imagine how frustrating it must be for readers who are prohibited from reading the books they want to read. I mean, looking at the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books from 1990-2000, I can easily pick out over a dozen books I enjoyed while I was growing up: Harry Potter; Lois Lowry’s Anastasia Krupnik series; Roald Dahl’s The Witches and James and the Giant Peach; Judy Blume’s Blubber, Tiger Eyes and Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret; Shel Silverstein’s A Light in the Attic; Martin Hanford’s Where’s Waldo books; Helen Bannerman’s Little Black Sambo, and many more.

To celebrate Banned Books week, I’m blogging about one of the books in the list that I found a few months ago at a bargain bookstore, a book that has been on my wishlist for some time now: In the Night Kitchen, written and illustrated by Maurice Sendak. First published in 1970, In the Night Kitchen was named a Caldecott Honor book in 1971. Sendak says it’s his homage to Windsor McCay, creator of the classic comic Little Nemo in Slumberland (check out the interesting visual parallels in this blog post), and the paneled visual narrative in this book shows its distinct comic book influence.

The picture book tells the surreal tale of a boy who hears a thump in the night, falls “through the dark, out of his clothes past the moon & his mama & papa sleeping tight.” He falls into a giant bowl of batter in a kitchen manned by three chubby, mustached chefs that look like Oliver Hardy (Sendak says they’re meant to look like Hitler, though, in reference to the Holocaust ovens), who try to bake Mickey into a cake, thinking he is the milk.

Before he is baked, however, Mickey pops out of the batter kneads the dough in the shape of a plane, grabs a measuring cup and heads to the Milky Way, where he gets the milk that the cooks need for the batter. Then he falls back into bed, and sleeps on till morning.

According to Wikipedia, the book is controversial because of the depiction of Mickey in the nude and alleged “sexual innuendos” in the “phallic” images throughout the picture book, and Sendak is reported to have reasoned that Mickey is nude because his clothes would have messed up the batter. Apparently, some libraries that have kept the book on their shelves have defaced the book by drawing pants or diapers to cover Mickey’s nether regions!

My thinking is, people will see what they want to see, so whether or not the images are intentional, they will always be subject to interpretation so why not let the readers make up their own minds about it? It’s anatomy, for crying out loud, and not a very detailed depiction at that.

Surrealism is an acquired taste for me, but I prize this book not because of the all the controversy behind it, but mainly because it exemplifies the power of illustration in conveying meaning in a picture book.  I’m glad I finally have this book, now I have Sendak’s three key works (including Where the Wild Things Are and Outside Over There) in addition to some of his lesser known works.

In the Night Kitchen is my banned book for this year’s Banned Books Week, but it’s just the middle of the week — I hope you celebrate Banned Books Week with me and read one of the books on the list!

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In the Night Kitchen, 25th Anniversary Edition hardcover with dust jacket, 5/5 stars

Book # 116 for 2010

*banned books week poster and bookmark images courtesy of the ALA website

[amazonify]::omakase::300:250[/amazonify]