Where the Wild Things Are is one of the most celebrated children's books of all time, but at the time of its release things didn't look quite so rosy for it. Reviewers and teachers found Maurice Sendak's tale, of an angry young boy who becomes king of an island of Wild Things, simply too grotesque for young readers, and it was initially banned from libraries until it was discovered that children were finding the book for themselves and reading it over and over, captivated by the subversive themes that the adults were worried about.

《野兽出没的地方》是有史以来最著名的儿童读物之一，但是在它发行的时候，情况并没有那么乐观。 评论家和老师们发现莫里斯 · 桑达克的故事---- 一个愤怒的小男孩成为野兽岛的国王，对年轻读者来说简直太荒诞了---- 它最初被禁止进入图书馆，直到发现孩子们为自己找到了这本书，并且一遍又一遍地阅读它，被大人们担心的颠覆性的主题所吸引。

Sendak had been working as an illustrator for nearly 20 years by the time Where the Wild Things Are was published in 1963. It tells its story in just 338 words, leaving Sendak's beautifully detailed illustrations to do much of the heavy lifting, making it an ideal book for younger readers. And while many found its themes dark, they make perfect sense when you realise that many of Sendak's family died in the Holocaust, and he himself spent some of his childhood confined to bed with health problems.

1963年《野兽出没的地方》出版的时候，桑达克已经做了将近20年的插画师。 它只用338个字讲述了它的故事，桑达克精美详细的插图完成了大部分繁重的工作，使它成为年轻读者的理想书籍。 虽然很多人发现它的主题是黑暗的，但当你意识到桑达克的许多家人死于大屠杀，他自己也因为健康问题在床上度过了一些童年时光时，这些主题就完全说得通了。

Sendak described his childhood as "a terrible situation"; it also gave him his love of stories, thanks to the books he read when he was unwell, and also to his father, an inveterate storyteller who would embellish tales from the Torah with inappropriately racy details.

桑达克将自己的童年描述为“一个可怕的处境” ; 这也给了他对故事的热爱，感谢他在身体不适时读的书，也感谢他的父亲，一个根深蒂固的故事讲述者，他会用不恰当的情色细节来修饰托拉的故事。

Lesson learned: Illustration isn't just about the pictures; it's also about telling a story. If you can carry off an entire book with barely any words, with the story mostly conveyed through the illustrations, you're on the right track.

经验教训: 插图不仅仅是图片，它也是一个故事。 如果你几乎不用任何文字就能读完整本书，而且故事大部分是通过插图传达的，那么你就走对路了。