SOURCE: “Maurice Sendak's Ritual Cooking of the Child in Three Tableaux: The Moon, Mother, and Music,” in Children's Literature, Vol. 18, 1990, pp. 68-86.

In the following essay, Perrot examines the rituals surrounding food and their significance in children's lives in the works of Maurice Sendak.

To Music Mother of Memory and Feeder of Dreams. 

—Edmond Rostand¹

Written Riddles for a Curtain-raiser: Jewish Salt in the Pot

To enter the fantastic world of Maurice Sendak's In the Night Kitchen brings the sheer literary delight of discovering a peculiar inventive process at work: a child is being “cooked” with all the author's literal refinements, and with what typical ingredients, in what a whimsical universe! The illustrator's tale abides by rules progressively defined in English humorous writing for children. In some ways it recalls the surprising events in the Duchess's kitchen of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: the flying saucepan, the baby that...