Entry One

One of my first memories of reading as a child was when, sometime around kindergarten, my Mom read the book Where the Wild Things Are to me. I remember at first enjoying the part about the boy refusing to take off his wolf costume, but as soon as the actual wild things came into the picture I was terrified. The illustrations in this book are amazing to me now, but as a little kid they scared the crap out of me. The monsters in the book are depicted as wild and fun loving, but also viscous. There is a part towards the end where the monsters basically tell the boy that they would rather eat him alive then see him leave them, because he is their king. This is obviously really scary, but also really depressing. Just look at the monster on the cover, he looks downright depressed. This book seriously freaked me out as a kid, not just a little bit, after my Mom read it to me I think I started crying and I couldn't stop thinking about it. Also, in a terrible twist of fate I went to school the next week and the teacher announced that the tomorrow she was going to read this book to the whole class. That gave me some crazy anxiety because I thought I was going to freak out in front of my hyper cool squad of kindergarten friends. I think I ended up staying home from school on the day when the teacher was going to read it, but I know for a fact that I avoided reading it again somehow and that it really terrorized my life for about a week of kindergarten.