[5] The story focuses on a young boy named Max who, after dressing in his wolf suit, wreaks such havoc through his household that he is sent to bed without his supper.
Max's bedroom undergoes a mysterious transformation into a jungle environment, and he winds up sailing to an island inhabited by monsters, simply called the Wild Things.
The story was supposed to be that of a child who, after a tantrum, is punished in his room and decides to escape to the place that gives the book its title, the "land of wild horses".
[9][10] When working on the 1983 opera adaptation of the book with Oliver Knussen, Sendak gave the monsters the names of his relatives: Tzippy, Moishe, Aaron, Emile, and Bernard.
[12][13] He indicated that the three books are "all variations on the same theme: how children master various feelings – danger, boredom, fear, frustration, jealousy – and manage to come to grips with the realities of their lives".
[15] Going along with this, Mary Pols of Time magazine wrote that "[w]hat makes Sendak's book so compelling is its grounding effect: Max has a tantrum and in a flight of fancy visits his wild side, but he is pulled back by a belief in parental love to a supper 'still hot', balancing the seesaw of fear and comfort".
[18] Heneghan concludes that "the overarching thought is an old one: a human engages with Wild Things and in so doing comes into accord with the world and gains a measure of self-mastery".
[21] Five years later, School Library Journal sponsored a survey of readers which identified Where the Wild Things Are as a top picture book.
[5] Elizabeth Bird, the librarian from the New York Public Library who conducted the survey, observed that there was little doubt that it would be voted number one and highlighted its designation by one reader as a watershed, "ushering in the modern age of picture books".
President Barack Obama read it aloud for children who were attending the White House Easter Egg Roll in multiple years.
[22] New York Times writer Bruce Handy brought up the idea that "as a child myself, without benefit of personal insights subsequently gleaned from more than a decade of talk therapy, I had been left cold by Where the Wild Things Are".
[32] In 1983, Walt Disney Productions conducted a series of tests of computer-generated imagery created by Glen Keane and John Lasseter using as their subject Where the Wild Things Are.
[33] In 1999, Isadar released a solo piano musical composition titled "Where the Wild Things Are" which appeared on his album Active Imagination, inspired by the Sendak book.
The composition was revisited and re-recorded in 2012 on Isadar's album, Reconstructed, with Grammy winner and founder of Windham Hill Records, William Ackerman, producing.