Title Outside Over There Series --- Author Maurice Sendak Illustrator Maurice Sendak Publisher Bodley Head - 1981 First Printing Bodley Head - 1981 Category Children Warnings None Main Characters Ida Main Elements Goblins

With Papa off to sea and Mama despondent, Ida must go outside over there to rescue her baby sister from goblins who steal her to be a goblin's bride.

Alright, after having also read Where the Wild Things Are I am convinced I don't like anything by Maurice Sendak. How I disliked Max, he was naughty and cruel and somehow that was a good thing??? And here Ida is a good girl who loves her little sister and rescues her but its all twisted and messed up...makes one wonder if Sendak had this vision of the ideal wild child boy (Peter Pan?) but thought girls were nasty and icky and had cooties or something. Reward the bad boys and punish the good girls...great messages there.

I discovered this even exists because I read somewhere it was part of the inspiration for The Labyrinth movie. On the surface it kind of is, a girl needs to rescue her sibling from goblins, although the girl didn't wish for her sister to be taken, that just sorta happened because the girl played a "wonder horn" (huh?). But I can see the similarities.

Now the things I didn't like and there were several.

First, the text. It sometimes rhymed, mostly didn't, and also didn't have that rhythm that that one expects in pictures books like this, making it awakward to read. Second, the artwork. While beautiful and of quality, Ida and her sister were creepy looking. At times it was the feet (hobbits would be jealous), other times the hands, and every now and then the faces were just nightmare inducing. The goblins were nowhere near as scary as Ida at times. Third...the goblins turned out to be naked babies? And we never find out what "goblin" was to marry Ida's sister, was that a baby too? Lots and lots of naked babies.

And peeking at some other reviews on Goodreads someone pointed out something valid. While Ida is placed in the role of primary caregiver (her mother just sits in the arbour while her eldest daughter takes care of the youngest) she is also described as "foolish" and "sly" and who crawled out of the windows backwards, which was apparently a great mistake. And she took way too much pleasure in torturing the goblins, sure the goblins where the bad guys but she was more cruel than they were. It was impossible to like her even though she risked herself to save her sister since her mom was too busy doing nothing looking at the garden and her father was away at sea. Plus as mentioned before, she was rendered with oversided feet and haggard facial features. Her mom is beautiful so its not that Sendak couldn't draw pretty people, he just chose to make Ida scary looking. And it wasn't that Ida was "ugly", I'm all for not drawing girls as the most beautiful that could ever be, but Ida was CREEPY!

So much potential for being a really good story if the goblins were actually goblins, if the text was better written...oh right, you're in luck, that was already done! Skip this book and just watch The Labyrith.

Now I'm gonna go and try to unsee this...