In the Night Kitchen

Title: In the Night Kitchen

Author: Maurice Sendak

Genre: Picture Book

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

Copyright Date: 1996

Pages in Book: 40 pages

Reading Level: 3-6 years

Summary: There is a young boy named Mickey who wakes up one night to a noise from downstairs. All of the sudden, he is naked and shows up in the “night kitchen”. He falls into batter, and while he’s struggling to get out, there are three bakers that prepare the batter for cooking. He flies out of the milk bottle and helps the bakers finish making the cake. He hops back into the bottle and returns to his bed.

Reaction: I did not like this book one bit. I thought it was awful and I saw a lot of things that were as if they were connected to World War II time. The bakers looked like Hitler, and I didn’t like how he was put in the oven, naked. I thought this was an absolutely horrible book, and I wouldn’t ever read this again.

Recommendation: I wouldn’t recommend this book to a single child. Even reading it as an adult, I thought it was horrible, and there were too many connections between Hitler and the Nazi’s in this book.

Potential Problems/Conflicts: I had a problem with this entire book. It was awful.