We Are All in the Dumps with Jack and Guy
ISBN 9788484643654 · Find on Bookshop.org
Today I have for you the provocative and powerful We Are All in the Dumps with Jack and Guy by Maurice Sendak. The text consists of two traditional Mother Goose nursery rhymes back to back—“We Are All in the Dumps”, a nonsense verse with fanciful imagery leavened by a bleak tone, and “Jack and Guy”, a story poem in which violent impulses give way to peace and tenderness. Adding a few expository signs and speech bubbles, Sendak fuses the two rhymes into a single narrative, in which Jack and Guy wander through an eerie, dystopian shantytown filled with homeless and hungry people. Large, anthropomorphic rats menace the population, kidnapping children and kittens and hauling them away in sacks. The enormous white moon looks on in dismay before leaping into action. It lifts Jack and Guy out of the city toward the combination bakery and orphanage where the innocents have been imprisoned and takes the shape of a ferocious cat to help them vanquish the wicked rats. Sendak’s art transforms the nursery rhymes into an incendiary political statement on inequality and apathy, as needed now as ever. #moon #cat #cats #rat #rats #poverty #violence #book #books #childrensbooks #beautifulbooks #picturebook #picturebooks #picturebookillustration #picturebookillustrations #picturebookart #childrensbookillustration #childrensliterature #illustration #kidlit #kidsbooks #bookworm #booklover #booklovers #bibliophile #bookstagram #bookstagrammer #bookstagrammers #instabook #instabooks