Banned Book: In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak

A cute picture book, and I'm not really sure why people object to it. It's the story of a little boy who wakes up in the middle of the night, falls out of pajamas, and enters the night kitchen, where bakers are making a cake.

He falls into the batter bowl and is almost baked into the cake, but gets out and uses the dough to make an airplane.


He then flies to the Milky Way to get milk for the cake. He brings it back, but falls into a giant milk bottle. Eventually he goes back to bed, pulls his jammies back on, and goes back to sleep.

What people are offended by is the fact that the boy is nude, and Maurice Sendak draws the boy's penis. It's visible in multiple drawings. Also, the panel where the boy is covered only in cake and says the milk is in him (which some people take to be a reference to semen, and it's definitely not).

Bottom line on this one, people overreacted to a naked little boy. I guess they forgot they were born naked once upon a time, and their children were born naked as well. It's not like the book's pornographic or anything.