5/10/2023 0 Comments Sendak in the night kitchen![]() ![]() ![]() What a goofball.”īut, all nakedness aside, I do find In the Night Kitchen to be a fairly difficult book to read. When she does notice it now, she just smiles and says, “He lost his clothes. When we first read the book, my daughter snorted and giggled at seeing Mickey naked for the first time, but, every subsequent time we’ve read it, his nudity has almost never come up. I’d wager ten bucks that any parent who ever tried to have In the Night Kitchen removed from their local library laughed like crazy whenever their two-year-old did a pre-bath naked run through their house, particularly if it was in front of company, so it’s ridiculous to try to turn Mickey’s nakedness into anything perverse or predatory. Mickey isn’t sexualized AT ALL and, let’s be honest, most kids, thanks to diaper changes or older or younger siblings, have seen a baby or toddler naked before. That choice alone has caused the book to be challenged or banned on several occasions and, while, sure, it is unusual to see a naked child in a picture book, it’s a fairly lame cause for controversy. I first became aware of it thanks to its reputation as “the book with the naked kid” – the young hero, three-year-old Mickey, loses his clothes early in the story, and he spends a fair amount of the rest of the tale naked, with his penis frequently visible. ![]()
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