''A Very Special House'', written by
Ruth Krauss
Ruth Ida Krauss (July 25, 1901 – July 10, 1993) was an American writer of children's books, including '' The Carrot Seed'', and of theatrical poems for adult readers. Many of her books are still in print.
Early life and education
Ruth Krauss ...
and illustrated by
Maurice Sendak
Maurice Bernard Sendak (; June 10, 1928 – May 8, 2012) was an American author and illustrator of children's books. Born to Polish-Jewish parents, his childhood was impacted by the death of many of his family members during the Holocaust. Send ...
, is a 1953 children's
picture book
A picture book combines visual and verbal narratives in a book format, most often aimed at young children. With the narrative told primarily through text, they are distinct from comics, which do so primarily through sequential images.
The ima ...
published by
HarperCollins
HarperCollins Publishers LLC is a British–American publishing company that is considered to be one of the "Big Five (publishers), Big Five" English-language publishers, along with Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group USA, Hachette, Macmi ...
. ''A Very Special House'' was a
Caldecott Medal
The Randolph Caldecott Medal, frequently shortened to just the Caldecott, annually recognizes the preceding year's "most distinguished American picture book for children". It is awarded to the illustrator by the Association for Library Service ...
Honor Book for 1954 and was Sendak's first Caldecott Honor Medal of a total of seven during his career. Sendak later won the Caldecott Medal in 1964 for ''
Where the Wild Things Are
''Where the Wild Things Are'' is a 1963 children's picture book written and illustrated by American author and illustrator, Maurice Sendak, originally published in hardcover by Harper & Row. The book has been adapted into other media several ti ...
'', which he both authored and illustrated. ''A Very Special House'' was re-issued by HarperCollins in 2001 in
hardcover
A hardcover, hard cover, or hardback (also known as hardbound, and sometimes as casebound (At p. 247.)) book is one bookbinding, bound with rigid protective covers (typically of binder's board or heavy paperboard covered with buckram or other clo ...
format as part of a project to re-issue 22 Sendak works including several authored by Ruth Krauss.
[American Library Association]
Caldecott Medal Winners, 1938 - Present
URL accessed 27 May 2009.
Description
The story, written by Krauss, is told in
present tense from the little boy's point of view (a
first-person narrative
A first-person narrative (also known as a first-person perspective, voice, point of view, etc.) is a mode of storytelling in which a storyteller recounts events from that storyteller's own personal point of view, using first-person grammar su ...
) and takes the form of a rhymed poem of 62 lines opening with "dee dee dee oh-h-h" and ending with "dee dee dee oh / doh doh doh-h-h-h" and has several lines with words that repeat three times such as "chairs chairs chairs" and "ooie ooie ooie". Nonsense words and phrases and
phonetic
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds or, in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians ...
misspellings of words (or mispronunciations) are scattered throughout the poem. The illustrations by Maurice Sendak, which also precede and follow the text, include occasional supplementary words and phrases.
Plot
An unnamed little boy imagines a "special house" that is "just a house for Me ME" (the cover artwork shows the boy drawing a picture of the house). He then imagines all the special things that make up the house including a special bed, special shelf, special chairs, a special door, special walls, and a special table. He brings to the special house a turtle, a rabbit, a giant, a dead mouse (in a box, according to the illustration), monkeys, and "some skunkeys and a very old lion". The lion proceeds to eat all the stuffing from the "chairs chairs chairs". The boy plays with the creatures "making secrets" and laughing and running and pretending to be chickens and singing until the play becomes frantic and tumultuous and "nobody says stop stop stop". The boy describes how his house is not really anywhere but "root in the moodle of my head head head": a statement which is complemented with images of the boy apparently asleep in a bed equipped with springs under it, his bouncing off the bed, and, on the following blank pages, him somersaulting through space. The illustrations conclude with an image, at the right bottom of the verso of a pair of blank pages, of the little boy looking mischievously over his shoulder.
Critical reception
''A Very Special House'' was published to very strong reviews. ''
The New York Times Book Review
''The New York Times Book Review'' (''NYTBR'') is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times'' in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely rea ...
'' called it "a revelation", ''
The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...
'' described it as "original and ebullient", and ''
Kirkus Reviews
''Kirkus Reviews'' is an American book review magazine founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus. The magazine's publisher, Kirkus Media, is headquartered in New York City. ''Kirkus Reviews'' confers the annual Kirkus Prize to authors of fiction, no ...
'' claimed that "Maurice Sendak's very entertaining pictures are perfect for Ruth Krauss's verses. Together they show just what goes on inside a little boy's mind".
[''Kirkus Reviews'']
See also
*
1953 in literature
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1953.
Events
*January 5 – ''Waiting For Godot'', a play by the Irish writer Samuel Beckett, has its first public stage performance, in French as ''En attendant G ...
*
Children's Literature
Children's literature or juvenile literature includes stories, books, magazines, and poems that are created for children. In addition to conventional literary genres, modern children's literature is classified by the intended age of the reade ...
*
Picture Books
A picture book combines visual and verbal narratives in a book format, most often aimed at young children. With the narrative told primarily through text, they are distinct from comics, which do so primarily through sequential images.
The ima ...
Notes
{{DEFAULTSORT:Very Special House
1953 children's books
American picture books
Picture books by Maurice Sendak
Caldecott Honor–winning works
HarperCollins books