Books like Where the Wild Things Are
By Maurice Sendak
Kids who love Where the Wild Things Are usually love it right after a bad mood, when the wolf suit and the wild rumpus feel like the only fair response. Max gets to roar and still gets carried home to a warm supper. The books below are for kids who need to let the wildness out before bed.
Max comes home to supper, and Stick Man by Julia Donaldson sends its hero on his own long trip back to family.
No mischief, no monster island. The Wonderful Things You Will Be by Emily Winfield Martin is pure warm gaze from parent to child, start to finish.
Love You Forever by Robert Munsch keeps the same devotion, but stretches it across a whole lifetime instead of one wild night.
The rumpus with the Wild Things becomes a quiet, gliding friendship in The Snail and the Whale by Julia Donaldson, ocean instead of jungle.
Max gets sent to bed for being wild. The Bad Seed by Jory John gives a genuinely bad character room to actually change.
The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter has real danger in the garden, not just imagined monsters.
Good for the kid who liked Max coming home to dinner waiting. Are You My Mother? by P.D. Eastman makes finding mom the whole point.
Less growling, more comfort. The Invisible String by Patrice Karst answers the separation fear underneath the wild rumpus directly and gently.
Reach for Guess How Much I Love You by Sam McBratney when the night calls for soft voices instead of roars and gnashing teeth.
No island, no monsters, just verse that pushes your kid out the door instead of home to bed. That's Oh, the Places You'll Go! by Dr. Seuss.
Grumpy Monkey by Suzanne Lang lets a bad mood just be a bad mood, no island required to work it out.
No wolf suit, no island, just one rough day piling up. Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst finds the funny side of a full-on tantrum.
