Books Like Where the Wild Things Are: 10 Next Reads

The books like Where the Wild Things Are that actually work are the ones that copy the right part of it — and Sendak's book is four books at once.

One is the anger nobody ever tells Max off for. One is the journey out and, more to the point, the journey home. One is a room full of monsters who turn out to be bossable. One is the last page, where the supper is still hot.

Your child came back for one of those. The ten below are sorted by which, with the year, the age and the format on each.

Which book should I read after Where the Wild Things Are?#

Ask yourself which bit they turn back to once the book is finished, then read across.

If they come back for all four, start with the bottom row. It is the cheapest to satisfy and the only one that helps at bedtime.

What is Where the Wild Things Are actually doing?#

Written by

Maurice Sendak

First published

1963

Ages

4–8

Format

Picture book

Where the Wild Things Are is a 1963 picture book written and illustrated by Maurice Sendak, in which a boy called Max is sent to bed without supper, sails to an island of monsters, is crowned their king, and comes home. It won the Caldecott Medal in 1964.

Four things run inside it, and they are not equally important.

The anger is never corrected. Max is rude, Max is punished, and the book declines to side with the punishment. No adult is ever drawn at all — the mother is a voice at the start and a supper at the end, and nothing in between takes her side. A child who gets told off several times a day has every reason to notice that.

The journey is a round trip. Out through the bedroom wall, in and out of weeks and almost over a year, and back the same way. Plenty of picture books send a child somewhere; what makes this one hold is that Max gets himself home again under his own steam.

The monsters are governed, not defeated. Max tames them by looking at them, and later makes them stop. Nothing is killed and nothing is escaped from, and the wild things end the book sorry that he is going.

The supper is still hot. No apology from anybody, no lesson stated, and a room that was kept warm the entire time he was away.

Here is where most "similar books" lists go wrong: the monsters are the least important of the four.

They are simply the part you can see on the cover. Max leaves the island out of loneliness, not fear — he is king of everything and would rather be where someone loves him best. A recommendation that copies the monsters and drops the round trip has copied the costume.

If they came back for the anger: books that never tell a child off#

Both of these do what Sendak does and almost nothing else does: they let a small person be furious for a whole book without a grown-up correcting them inside it.

1. When Sophie Gets Angry—Really, Really Angry…#

Written by

Molly Bang

First published

1999

Ages

3–7

Format

Picture book

Molly Bang, 1999. Sophie's sister grabs her toy, Sophie falls over, roars, runs out of the house, climbs a tree, watches the water and comes home. It is Max's shape almost beat for beat, with one difference worth owning both books for: Sophie removes herself, and Max is sent.

Reading it aloud: the colours carry the argument, going red at the peak and cooling to green as she settles. Slow down as the page cools rather than as the story ends.

2. No, David!#

Written by

David Shannon

First published

1998

Ages

2–5

Format

Picture book

David Shannon, 1998. David is told no on almost every page, in enormous letters, until a last spread that is a hug. The detail most parents miss is that the adult is never drawn as a whole person — a hand, an arm, a doorway, and a voice. That makes it Max's book from the opposite end: David never gets to leave, so the repair has to come to him.

Reading it aloud: two minutes long, and the one here a two-year-old can already take. Let the last page sit in silence.

If they came back for the journey: books that go out and get home#

The most under-recommended group for this search, and the one carrying most of the original's actual load.

3. Harold and the Purple Crayon#

Written by

Crockett Johnson

First published

1955

Ages

3–7

Format

Picture book

Crockett Johnson, 1955. A small boy in pyjamas draws a moon, a path, a forest, an ocean and a great deal of trouble, then draws his own bedroom window around the moon and gets back into bed.

This is the closest relative Max has, it is eight years older than him, and it appears on almost none of the lists ranking for this search. Harold makes the danger and Harold un-makes it: the round trip in its purest form, with the child holding the pen.

Reading it aloud: stop before he solves each problem and ask what he should draw. It is the rare book where a four-year-old's answer is as good as the author's.

4. Owl Moon#

Written by

Jane Yolen

Illustrated by

John Schoenherr

First published

1987

Ages

4–8

Format

Picture book

Jane Yolen and John Schoenherr, 1987, and winner of the Caldecott Medal in 1988. A child goes out into deep snow at night with their father to look for an owl. They find one. They walk home. Nothing is wild and nothing goes wrong, which makes it the gentle version of the same journey.

Reading it aloud: it is written to be read quietly and collapses if you perform it. The silences between the owl calls are the book.

If they came back for the monsters: books where the monster can be bossed#

Not books with monsters in them. Books where a child is plainly in charge of one, which is the specific pleasure Max supplies.

5. Go Away, Big Green Monster!#

Written by

Ed Emberley

First published

1992

Ages

2–5

Format

Die-cut picture book

Ed Emberley, 1992. Die-cut pages build a monster feature by feature out of the dark, then take it apart again on the child's instructions until nothing is left. It is the youngest book here and the most literal about the mechanism: the monster exists only while you are looking at it.

Reading it aloud: let them say the "go away" lines and mean it. Under three this often goes better at breakfast than at bedtime.

6. There's a Nightmare in My Closet#

Written by

Mercer Mayer

First published

1968

Ages

4–8

Format

Picture book

Mercer Mayer, 1968, and banded 4–8 by Penguin Random House. A boy arms himself, confronts the nightmare that lives in his closet, and finds it crying. He tucks it into bed beside him. Of everything here this most nearly repeats what Max does to the wild things, and it is almost never named alongside him.

Reading it aloud: the turn is the tears, not the monster. Pause there — some children need a beat to work out that the frightening thing is the frightened one.

7. The Gruffalo#

Written by

Julia Donaldson

Illustrated by

Axel Scheffler

First published

1999

Ages

3–7

Format

Board book and picture book

Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, 1999. A mouse invents a monster to frighten off everything that wants to eat him, then walks into the monster he invented and talks his way out of that too.

An honest note: it is the least Sendak-like of the three. The mouse wins by being clever rather than by being king, and the rhyme does most of the work. Buy it because it is superb, not because it is similar.

Reading it aloud: pick a voice for the mouse and keep it. Children notice a swap and stop you to say so.

If they came back for the supper: books about the repair#

The quietest of the four and the one that lasts longest. Each ends with everyone home and nobody required to say sorry first.

8. Owl Babies#

Written by

Martin Waddell

Illustrated by

Patrick Benson

First published

1992

Ages

2–5

Format

Board book and picture book

Martin Waddell and Patrick Benson, 1992. Three owlets wake in the night to find their mother gone, and spend the whole book waiting on a branch in the dark. Bill, the smallest, has one line and repeats it. She comes back.

Reading it aloud: hand Bill's line to your child and many will take it. The line they take is the one about the return, not the one about the fear.

9. The Runaway Bunny#

Written by

Margaret Wise Brown

Illustrated by

Clement Hurd

First published

1942

Ages

2–5

Format

Board book and picture book

Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd, 1942. A small rabbit announces he is running away and lists what he will turn into; his mother lists what she will become to find him each time. Some adults read it as claustrophobic rather than comforting, which is fair — but for a child testing whether leaving is even allowed, it is the most reassuring thing here.

Reading it aloud: it is a chant, not a plot. Keep the two voices clearly separate and stop on the carrot without adding anything of your own.

10. The Tiger Who Came to Tea#

Written by

Judith Kerr

First published

1968

Ages

2–6

Format

Picture book

Judith Kerr, 1968. A tiger arrives at teatime, eats everything in the house including all the water in the tap, and leaves. Nobody is frightened and nobody explains. It is the repair run backwards: the wild thing visits the house, and the house absorbs it without a scene.

Reading it aloud: sound more delighted with each thing the tiger eats, and resist making the ending mean something. It does not.

Is Where the Wild Things Are too scary?#

It is one of the most asked questions about the book, and page one for this keyword does not answer it at all.

For most children over four, no — and the fright is doing a job. Writing for BookTrust, the UK's national children's reading charity, the children's author Christopher Edge argues that children use scary stories "as a way to identify and master their fears – a crucial stage in child development – equipping them to deal with the real world". Christopher Edge is writing about older readers and middle-grade horror, but the mechanism is the one Sendak is using: the monsters are safe precisely because the boat comes back.

It is not on a banned-books list. Where the Wild Things Are does not appear among the American Library Association's frequently challenged children's books. The Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association, noted in 2016 only that Where the Wild Things Are and Sendak's In the Night Kitchen turn up in searches about challenged Caldecott winners.

Fear of the dark is normal at this age and the book did not cause it. The American Academy of Pediatrics notes that a fear of being alone in the dark "is a common childhood fear", and advises parents not to belittle or ridicule a child's fears.

But do not make it the last book of the night to begin with. The American Academy of Pediatrics reports that nightmares "tend to peak between 3 and 12 years old". Read it after tea a few times, then move it to bedtime once it is familiar.

If they do not like it, they are not behind. Shelve it and try again in six months.

What age is Where the Wild Things Are for?#

It is banded 3–6 nearly everywhere, including on our own list of the best children's books of all time. Our position is narrower: start at four.

The case is that Max's book is told from outside the tantrum, by someone who already knows how it ends, and that vantage point is the thing a four-year-old can hold and a three-year-old usually cannot — the full argument is in the best books for 3-year-olds, where it is the one title we hold back, and it arrives in the best books for 4-year-olds.

The classic we would not hand over next#

Written by

Shel Silverstein

First published

1964

Ages

4–8

Format

Picture book

The Giving Tree gets suggested as a next read after Max, and it is the wrong one — not because it is a bad book, but because it is the structural opposite of what is being searched for.

Shel Silverstein, 1964. A tree gives a boy everything it has, piece by piece, until it is a stump.

There is no round trip. The boy leaves and keeps leaving, nobody is angry, and nothing is kept warm for anyone. It is not doing what a child who loved Max is asking for, and handing it over as the next read tends to produce a puzzled evening.

Read it at six or seven, when a child can argue with it. That is what it is good for.

How do I read Where the Wild Things Are aloud?#

By EBSCO's count it is ten sentences and 338 words, and it takes about four minutes at bedtime pace. Nearly all the craft is in what you do with the pages that have no words.

Say nothing at all during the rumpus. Three full spreads carry no text, and adults reflexively narrate them, which is the commonest way to lose the best part of the book. Reading Rockets, the literacy service of WETA, the public television station in Washington, D.C., notes that sharing wordless books builds "listening skills, vocabulary, comprehension".

Ask about the pictures, not the plot. "What are they doing now?" while the rumpus is happening does more than any comprehension question afterwards.

Land the last line quietly. Do not add "and his mummy wasn't cross any more" — the book deliberately does not say it, and the silence is where a child does the thinking.

Then ask the real question. "Why did Max want to go home?" Their answer will usually tell you which of the four things above they came for.

What to read next#

• The wider shelf, sorted by the age each book lands at → the best children's books of all time.
• You want the whole year's list → the best books for 3-year-olds and the best books for 4-year-olds.
• The anger is the actual problem, not the reading → books about feelings for toddlers, sorted by when in the day to read each one.
• Why some books survive forty readings → what makes a good children's story, and turning a photo into a children's book on how a child becomes a character.

What can a book where my child is the main character do that Max cannot?#

If you keep one thing from this page, keep who each book is for:

• The one who comes back for the roar → When Sophie Gets Angry, or No, David! under three.
• The one who comes back for the boat → Harold and the Purple Crayon, then Owl Moon.
• The one who comes back for the monsters → Go Away, Big Green Monster! at two, There's a Nightmare in My Closet at four.
• The one who comes back for the supper → Owl Babies, and keep it in the bedroom.

Ten books, and not one of them starts in your child's bedroom.

That is not a flaw. Max's room has to be a room anyone can stand in, or the book would only ever have worked for one boy in Brooklyn. The generality is the engineering.

But a round trip needs a place to leave from, and every child listening has to lend Max theirs.

That is what we make at KindFable. You upload one photo, type a few lines about your child — what they are into, something that actually happened to them — and we paint them as the hero of a full 32-page storybook. Not their name dropped into a template: their face, drawn as a character, on every page, with up to three companions beside them. A grandparent, the dog, an imaginary friend who lives on the ceiling.

A book where my child is the main character does not have to be lent a bedroom. The child goes out from a room that is already theirs, takes the people who are actually in the house, and comes back to them — which is the part of Max's book that does the work.

Here is a complete one. Maddox is five, and the thing that happened was his first goal: the waiting all season, the moment itself, and the ten seconds afterwards before it hit him and he screamed. Read the whole book, and press play on the narration.

The actual book

Read it, and hear it

Everything below is the finished book — not a mock-up, not a selection of the good pages. The narration and the song are the ones the family received.

The photo they uploaded

The character we drew

Read Maddox's Shout Across the IceAll 13 spreads, exactly as the family received them, in the same page-flip reader they use at home.Open the book

The whole book read aloud, the way it arrives with a hardcover.

Written from this story — not a stock track with a name dropped in.

The full story, in text

1. 1Saturday morning, Maddox stepped onto the ice, his hockey jersey tucked close beneath the rink lights.
2. 2He had skated since September, waiting and waiting for his first goal.
3. 3The puck slid ahead. Maddox chased it, knees bent, skates whispering over the bright ice.
4. 4He tapped the puck towards the net, then followed it between the painted lines.
5. 5The puck crossed the line. Maddox scored his first ever goal.
6. 6For one quiet moment, he did not celebrate. He skated back to the bench, stunned.
7. 7Skate on, Maddox. His stick lowered, and his wide eyes stayed fixed on the net.
8. 8Ten seconds passed. Then Maddox understood what had happened, and his mouth opened wide.
9. 9His scream burst across the rink. Every player and watcher heard it.
10. 10His shout rolled around the boards. Maddox stood still, holding his stick.
11. 11The whole rink heard Maddox's first goal. His shout filled every corner.
12. 12Since Saturday, Maddox has worn his hockey jersey every day, even to bed. Skate on, Maddox.

The words to the song

[Verse 1]
Saturday morning, Maddox skated on the ice
His hockey jersey tucked in nice
Since September, he waited for his goal
The puck slid on, and Maddox chased it whole

[Chorus]
Skate on, Maddox, skate on bright
Tap the puck and aim just right
Maddox scored his first ever goal
His big shout filled the rink as a whole

[Verse 2]
The puck crossed the line, then Maddox skated back
He stood still, with his stick held slack
Ten seconds passed, then he knew
His shout rolled round the boards too

[Chorus]
Skate on, Maddox, skate on bright
Every player heard his delight
The whole rink heard his first goal
His shout filled every corner whole

On KindFable it goes: name and age, one photo, a tick box for consent, a few lines about your child, and one of nine art styles. You see the cover, painted, before you pay for anything — the softcover and hardcover prices sit on one page, and the hardcover adds the narrated audiobook (and every book includes its own song, free), which is how a custom storybook like Maddox's gets its narration and its song.

Read the ten first. Then, on the evening they ask why Max wanted to go home, start with the photo.

Book covers are shown unaltered for identification, sourced from Open Library. Each cover remains the property of its publisher and illustrator. KindFable is not affiliated with any of the books recommended here.