A Wild Homage

Tomorrow, the much-anticipated film,“Where the Wild Things Are”is coming to theaters. It’s based on the belovedchildren’s bookby Maurice Sendak, whose fantastical illustrations have inspired innumerable artists.

One of those inspired artists is Cory Godbey. Godbey is an illustrator who started the fabulous blog Terrible Yellow Eyes, an homage to Sendak by dozens of illustrators from around the world. Together, they have contributed more than 250 Wild Things tribute pieces. The collection is quite diverse (from cartoons, to paintings, to diorama) and inspirational in its own right.

“Steam Thing,” by Bill Carman

“Tamed,” by Chris Houghton

Curator Cory Godbey first discovered Sendak’s classic as a teenager: he told us ‘it was this watershed moment. Where The Wild Things Are changed the way I looked at picture books, and helped me understand my own style as an artist.’ And as a writer — Godbey was inspired by Sendak’s short, active sentences. He loves the way Wild Things opens with the line, ‘The night Max wore his wolf suit…’ because ‘there’s no exposition, [Sendak] just drops you right into the story.’

“Wild and Instrumental,” by Cory Godbey

And Godbey continues to be inspired by the character Max and the childhood imagination and anger that shape his world. Godbey explains that when he was growing up, ‘there weren’t books like that that so openly worked through anger issues. I really love that [Max] can go to where all these horrible things are, but he’s not going to get hurt — nothing really bad is going to happen — he’s in control of it. That’s empowering.’