Review of a book read in another Class (#1)

OK. Let's see. One of the books I've read for another class this semester is Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak, which is about a young boy, named Max, who is a terror to his mother due to his wild behavor. He's sent to his room without supper as punishment when he talks back to her and it is from his room that he runs away to an island where he meets monsters and becomes their king.

This is a picture book for the most part, so upon first read there's not a whole lot to it from an adult's perspective. A few lines of text on one page balancing a large illustration on the other. This is presumably done in children's books because young children seem to initially take in new information visually, so these books try to get the child's brain to start associating textual content with visual content. Over time, as the reading level advances, childrens books contain fewer and fewer pictures and more and more text. The goal being to get the child to use their imagination to form the pictures themselves in their heads, rather than requiring an illustrator to create it for them.

However, the careful observer will notice while reading Where the Wild Things Are that as the story progresses, just the opposite occurs. The story begins with a lot of text and a small picture on one page, but as you turn each page and the story progresses, more and more of the two-page layout is filled with picture, slowly edging out the text until finally both pages are completely filled with illustrations and no text. But then the text begins a slow comeback taking back the page(s) until the final page of the story, which contains only text with no accompanying illustration on either page.

The text is supposed to represent the logical, rational, and lawful part of Max, while the illustrations represent his imagination and "wild side." In Freudian terms, the story is basically about a child's struggle to gain control over his impulses. At the point in the story where both pages are filled by illustration and there is no text, Max is completely immersed in his imagination (note his eyes are closed on those pages) and has given himself up entirely to his desires and impulses. However, a turning point is then reached where he realizes the value of controlling these impulses (he gets hungry). At this point, the illustrations recede until Max returns fully to reality and finds himself back in his bedroom, where he finds a hot supper waiting for him.

When read at face value, the book is honestly pretty lame if you're older than 5 years old, but upon deeper inspection, there is actually a whole lot going on in this book. There really isn't anything illustrated without a purpose, so the closer you look, the more meaning can be found.
Pretty darned cool. But the big question is this: Did the author and illustrator purposefully set out with the intention of putting all of these more complicated meanings into the design of the book, or were they simply setting out to tell a story to entertain children, with illustrations based simply on what the illustrator imagined when they read the text? Is meaning defined by the artist or by the beholder? Opinions vary, but to quote old Siggy, "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."