Wild Things Research Articles

On beasts and monsters

The paper discusses different well-known imagined monsters. Starting with the fairy tale and the films on The Beauty and the Beast (La Belle et la Bête), hidden meanings from several psychodynamically valid perspectives are proposed with the aim of finding out what makes this story so popular and everlasting. Projected demons or impulses in Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are are discussed as well as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and his monster who are presented and connected to facts in this author’s life. In the summary links to psychoanalytic thinking are proposed.

Where the wild things are: using remotely sensed forest productivity to assess arboreal marsupial species richness and abundance

AbstractAimHighly productive areas have long been hypothesized to support a greater abundance and diversity of animals than less productive areas. However, evidence for this is equivocal and, until recently, has been difficult to test at a landscape level. For the first time, we use imaging spectroscopy to investigate the relationship between plant productivity and arboreal mammal species richness and abundance at a landscape scale.LocationA eucalypt forest in New South Wales, Australia.MethodsUsing a common index of plant productivity – normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) – as a proxy for available energy, we test the ability of species‐energy theory and optimal foraging theory to explain variations in arboreal marsupial species richness and abundance. We obtained NDVI data from an airborne imaging spectrophotometer.ResultsSpecies richness increased in relation to NDVI among 53 eucalypt forest sites, based on five arboreal marsupial species. The presence and abundance of a eucalypt folivore specialist, Petauroides volans, increased in relation to NDVI. The relative abundance of all arboreal marsupials collectively also increased in relation to NDVI among sites, even with P. volans data excluded. In support of optimal foraging theory, the observed locations of P. volans had a higher NDVI value than the average for sampling transects. In addition, the average NDVI of eucalypt forest remnants was positively related to the overall abundance of P. volans. An important caveat is that NDVI did not explain all the variation in arboreal marsupial populations.Main conclusionsAssuming that NDVI is an appropriate proxy for available energy in a eucalypt forest, our results are consistent with predictions from species‐energy and optimal foraging theories. Remotely sensed measures of productivity and forage quality, used in conjunction with other important landscape characteristics, provide a potentially powerful tool to evaluate habitat and biodiversity hotspots at scales relevant to wildlife management and conservation.

The North American approach to waterfowl management: synergy of hunting and habitat conservation

Hunters have been central to waterfowl management in North America over the past century. Numerous partnerships among government agencies, non-government organizations and private individuals form the core of conservation endeavours for migratory ducks, geese and swans and their diverse habitats. As a consequence of these efforts and the resilience of waterfowl populations, these species have fared better than most guilds of migratory birds. Threats to remaining habitats and the waning connections of people to wild things and wild places comprise the most serious challenges to sustaining this system.

A World Trimmed with Fur: Wild Things, Pristine Places, and the Natural Fringes of Qing Rule by Jonathan Schlesinger

A World Trimmed with Fur: Wild Things, Pristine Places, and the Natural Fringes of Qing Rule by Jonathan Schlesinger

Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are as an Example of Teaching Visual Literacy

Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are as an Example of Teaching Visual Literacy

Birds, Beasts and Babies: Notes from An Infant Observation

This essay is based on my final report covering the second year of my Infant Observation of baby Max. I attempt to convey my experience and the impact it has had upon me and this takes me into a number of different areas: into the content and symbolism of what I observed, into the relationships between observer and child, mother and infant, analyst and analysand and into stories and mythology. As images and symbols are amplified threads link together. Synchronicity is one of the uniting factors and I relate my thoughts and observations to the work and theories of others. Beasts appear – the goldfinch, the fly, the Gruffalo, the mouse, the Wild Things … and more – and I consider how these might offer a window into Max's inner world. I focus on the interface between internal and external worlds and reflect upon the concept of an intermediate space and the question of meaning.

Not really wild things

We take a look at the benefits for children of rough and tumble play, and the place it has in healthy child development, in order to inform your setting's approach on whether to allow, tolerate or ban it.

A Beaked and Feathered God

A Beaked and Feathered God

Where the wild things are: looking for uncultured Glomeromycota.

Our knowledge of Glomeromycotan fungi rests largely on studies of cultured isolates. However, these isolates probably comprise one life-history strategy - ruderal. Consequently, our knowledge of arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi may be biased towards fungi that occur primarily in disturbed habitats and associate with disturbance-tolerant host plants. We can expect to see a signal for this in DNA-based community surveys: human-impacted habitats and cultivated plants should yield a higher proportion of AM fungal species that have been cultured compared with natural habitats and wild plants. Using the MaarjAM database (a curated open-access database of Glomeromycotan sequences), we performed a meta-analysis on studies that described AM fungal communities from a variety of habitats and host plants. We found a greater proportion of cultured AM fungal taxa in human-impacted habitats. In particular, undisturbed forests and grasslands/savannahs contained significantly fewer cultured taxa than human-impacted sites. We also found that wild plants hosted fewer cultured fungal taxa than cultivated plants. Our data show that natural communities of AM fungi are composed largely of uncultured taxa, and this is particularly pronounced in natural habitats and wild plants. We are better poised to understand the functioning of AM symbioses associated with cultivated plants and human-impacted habitats.

Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: How an Unlikely Couple Found Love, Dodged the FBI, and Transformed Children’s Literature by Philip Nel (review)

Reviewed by: Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: How an Unlikely Couple Found Love, Dodged the FBI, and Transformed Children’s Literature by Philip Nel Nathalie op de Beeck (bio) Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: How an Unlikely Couple Found Love, Dodged the FBI, and Transformed Children’s Literature, by Philip Nel. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2012. Crockett Johnson’s Harold and the Purple Crayon (1955), predating twentieth-century exemplars The Cat in the Hat and Where the Wild Things Are, distills enduring beliefs about children’s imaginations into witty and elegant picture book form. Americanist Philip Nel, author of Dr. Seuss: American Icon and coeditor with Lissa Paul of Keywords for Children’s Literature, has long been invested in Johnson’s career, which encompassed fascinations with design, editorial cartooning, and mathematical equations in addition to writing for children. Nel is also [End Page 292] coeditor, with Eric Reynolds, on Fantagraphics’s projected five-volume collection of Johnson’s syndicated Barnaby comic strips, originally published in the left-leaning PM magazine. For more than a decade, Nel interviewed a pantheon of figures in literature, art, and children’s publishing. He visited archives nationwide, discovering in Johnson’s life a classic American narrative. As the exhaustive appendix to Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss reveals, Johnson’s story connects the dots of twentieth-century magazine publishing, children’s books, and the art world. In her Book-a-Day Almanac blog, Anita Silvey writes, “If you are a fan of Crockett Johnson, then Philip Nel’s biography, Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss, will be a welcome addition to your bookshelf” (25 Sept. 2013).What readers may have forgotten, or may not have known in the first place, is that Johnson had a remarkable partner in Ruth Krauss. Krauss—frequently remembered for A Hole Is to Dig (1952), which introduced illustrator Maurice Sendak to children’s literature—was an artist and poet with an affinity for children’s firsthand perspectives. When Krauss met Crockett Johnson in 1939—she was thirty-eight, he was thirty-three—Johnson was a talented magazine designer and comics artist. He seems not to have been a person who foresaw a future in picture books per se. True, while serving as art director for the radical weekly New Masses, Johnson produced witty strips and one-liners, and often utilized images of children in his visual rhetoric. Nel writes that Johnson’s early “cartoons figure children’s imaginations as powerful, evincing an interest in what Julia Mickenberg has called the ‘Pedagogy of the Popular Front,’ a movement in progressive parenting” (46). Nel describes Johnson’s full-page illustration of international children carrying flags and weapons for the Popular Front: “All charge into battle together, conveying the power of children to effect social change” (47). Readers will recognize an image of a marching, frowning young leftie from the eye-catching cover of Nel and Mickenberg’s 2008 anthology Tales for Little Rebels: A Collection of Radical Children’s Literature. In 1939, Johnson already “was considering leaving New Masses and pursuing a career as a cartoonist” (54), and late that year his wordless Little Man with the Eyes comic strip had a following in Collier’s. Prior to meeting Krauss, though, Johnson had not yet found success with Barnaby. And not until The Carrot Seed (1945), which Krauss wrote and he illustrated, would Johnson collaborate on a book specifically for young readers. Nel commendably includes Krauss in this blended biography, not as Johnson’s muse but as a force all her own. Krauss is a slippery subject compared to Johnson, and in Nel’s telling, Johnson’s story follows the [End Page 293] more satisfying, or traceable, arc. Born David Johnson Leisk, he grew up in Queens and studied typography and graphic design with none other than Frederick Goudy at NYU. (Nel handily describes how and why Johnson, a “perfectionist,” demanded italicized Futura medium for Barnaby, “the first strip to always use typeset dialogue” [73].) As a young cartoonist for the radical periodical New Masses, Johnson began signing his images with variations on his Davy Crockett-inspired childhood nickname and his run-of-the-mill middle name. Nel supplies the quaint detail that “by...

Censorship of Where the Wild Things Are

Censorship of Where the Wild Things Are

Reimagining Development 3.0 for a Changing Planet

SummaryThis working paper argues we need to reimagine development tactics to fashion Development 3.0, to match what business analysts now call World 3.0, a global system characterized by high turbulence and new threats. It begins by contrasting our former classification of countries spatially into First, Second and Third worlds with a new division of development epochs in sequence since the end of World War II. World 1.0 emphasized industrialization, urbanization, and modernization, lasting from 1945 to 1980. World 2.0 emphasized global trade, and a shift to private actors doing the work of development, from 1980 to the early 2000s. World 3.0 can be seen as superceding globalization by concern with emergent threats. World 1.0 privileged state actions to accelerate “nation building” within former colonies, whereas World 2.0 privileged private capital and free trade as engines for economic growth. Now, following wars, disasters, and the near meltdown of the global financial system in 2007/08, we enter World 3.0 as depicted by Ghemawat and others.We review thirteen major changes not recognized within World 2.0 or its accompanying Development 2.0 regime. The major changes include the rise of homeless capital, the Conservative counter‐revolution of the 1980s, the implosion of the USSR, rise of modern China, emergence of BRIC nations, a pan‐urban world, rise of identity politics, reemergence of Africa, shift to non‐state warfare, growing threat of climate change, MENA nations experience Arab Spring, digital worlds expand, and velocity increases. They suggest coming turbulence and unexpected outcomes, or “mashups” (Ramo).These changes suggest a different emergent system, becoming World 3.0 which has profound differences from how we view our planet's political economy (World 2.0).If so, the paper outlines implications which suggest the time has come to “take on board” our changed planetary circumstances, and thus begin crafting Development 3.0.“Where the wild things are”, introduces metaphors to change the ‘meta‐narratives’ used for viewing World 3.0: “herding elephants,” “taming feral capital”, “swimming with tides” and “avoiding mashups”. They help us realize that long recognized problems (or “elephants”) may show unexpected behaviors to pose new threats within World 3.0.The main argument of the paper then lays out a baker's dozen changes needed if we hope to fashion more effective ways to promote development for us all. We must “rebalance society” (ala Mintzberg), refashion aid, privilege sustainability, emphasize fair trade, tame feral capital, devise better metrics, include all nations & peoples, seat G‐20 not G‐8, recognize semi‐sovereigns, focus on a pan‐urban world, build coalitions in networks, involve women & youth, and rebuild community leadership. All of which assumes we can offset a strong tide towards return to the excesses of World 2.0.

Goldie Roth unchained: risk and its management in Lian Tanner’s Museum of Thieves

In her children’s action adventure novel Museum of Thieves , Lian Tanner overtly critiques adult risk-aversion and the over-protection of children. The protagonist is Goldie, an unruly child who escapes the oppressive regime of the City of Jewel where children up to the age of 12 are chained, for their own safety, to adult companions. Goldie escapes Jewel’s power structures and enters a mysterious museum housing the city’s unwanted wildness and danger. In its opening chapter Museum of Thieves establishes a subversive schema that problematises concepts of safety and order and glorifies chaos and risk, but this paper argues that as the novel progresses the author finds the schema increasingly difficult to control. It is tempting to read the museum as a “time out” zone such as CS Lewis’s Narnia, L Frank Baum’s Oz, and Maurice Sendak’s “place where the wild things are”: a space in which child characters can gain self-knowledge and skills before returning to an adult-dominated order. However, because of the degree to which Jewel and its structures are pathologised, Tanner finds she cannot bring Goldie back from “time out”. But rather than being a transgressive text, Museum of Thieves ends in a much less subversive place than it sets out to reach; the museum is revealed as a tightly controlled space and Goldie is well-protected, both within the diegesis by the museum’s special features, and beyond the diegesis by the author and the author’s cognisance of contemporary publishing industry expectations about the depiction of risk in children’s fiction. Keywords: bubble-wrap; order; chaos; unruly; safety; risk; “time out”; Australian children’s fiction

A Child's Eye View of Where the Wild Things Are: Lessons from Spike Jonze's Film Adaptation of Maurice Sendak's Picture Book

Many children's books have inspired films, however, few of these movies have sparked the intense debates engendered by Spike Jonze's adaptation of Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are. While most professional critics warmly embraced Jonze's film, the work left parents with mixed feelings, which were documented in news reports that coincided with its American debut in the fall of 2009. In fact, numerous moviegoers and even some journalists, voiced the opinion that Jonze's adaptation was not a film for children, but rather one for the adults who had grown up reading Sendak's book. Nonetheless, the movie depicts a child using fantasy and play to cope with, and better understand, his changing reality. In this regard, the 2009 movie is very consistent with Sendak's original work. Therefore, Spike Jonze's adaptation is not only suitable for younger viewers, but could serve to teach them how to navigate through difficult emotional circumstances.

Where are the wild things? Why we need better data on species distribution

AbstractAimThe effects of ongoing global change are causing increasing concern about the ability of species or biomes to shift or adapt. Tremendous efforts have been made to develop ever more sophisticated species distribution models to provide forecasts for the future of biodiversity. All these models rely on species occurrence data, either for calibration or validation. Here we evaluate (i) whether distribution data diverge among widely used sources, for supposedly well‐known taxa, and (ii) to what extent these divergences affect species distribution models.LocationEurope (as an example).MethodsWe compared the distribution maps of 21 of the most common European trees, according to four large‐scale, putatively reliable sources of distribution data. For each species, we compared the outputs of correlative species distribution models built using occurrence data from each of these sources of data. We also investigated how discrepancies in large‐scale occurrence data affected the validation scores of two process‐based tree distribution models.ResultsMaps of tree occurrence diverged in 8–74% of the forested area, depending on species. These discrepancies affected projections of niche models: for example, 22–75% of the area projected as suitable by at least one model generated using one source of data was not projected as such by all other models. For most species, this proportion increased under scenarios of climate change, whatever the model used. To a lesser extent, uncertainties on current species distributions also affect the validation score of process‐based distribution models.Main conclusionsReliable, widely used sources of occurrence data strongly diverge even for well‐known taxa – the most common European trees. Scientists and stakeholders should acknowledge this gap in knowledge, since accurate data are a prerequisite to providing stakeholders with robust forecasts on biodiversity. Participatory science programmes and remote sensing techniques are promising tools for rapidly gathering such data.

Susan Cooper’s Dawn of Fear : Cross-writing, the Uncanny, and a Childhood in Wartime

Susan Cooper’s Dawn of Fear:Cross-writing, the Uncanny, and a Childhood in Wartime Lee A. Talley (bio) Susan Cooper is best known by children’s literature scholars as an award-winning author of fantasy, and her Dark Is Rising series (1965–77) tends to be the focus of most of the academic commentary on her work. Written in between the first two volumes of that quintet, Dawn of Fear (1970), her realist, autobiographical novel about a British boy during the Second World War, has been largely overlooked. Despite being well reviewed upon publication,1 few academics have examined the novel, and when they do, they discuss it within the context of other fiction or within the rest of Cooper’s oeuvre.2 Yet Dawn of Fear has much to offer readers interested in children’s war literature; most significantly, it challenges assumptions that ally children with innocence and play. This potent alliance of childhood, play, and happiness—as opposed to adulthood’s connection with work and experience—is one that Cooper’s novel dismantles as my analysis of Derek’s growing fear will reveal. Dawn of Fear also illuminates how the secret knowledge from which adults work to shield children—most often about sex and/or death—keeping them “innocent,” is already known to them.3 Dawn of Fear troubles the notion that childhood is a space and time apart from the experience of adulthood by calling attention to war’s parallels in children’s lives (see Mikkelsen; Rosenberg; and Sainsbury); it elucidates how a large part of war’s terror for civilians is its dreadful familiarity. Although the novel examines the tragic depredations of war wrought by adults, it simultaneously illuminates the ways children are not solely victims of war but also perpetrators of violence and suffering,4 thereby complicating our understanding of youth. Dawn of Fear skillfully uses cross-writing and the uncanny to problematize limiting assumptions about childhood, depicting youth as competent and far more knowledgeable than some adults would like to admit. [End Page 238] Susan Cooper’s Dawn of Fear exemplifies U. C. Knoepflmacher and Mitzi Myers’ definition of cross-writing as the “colloquy of past and present selves,” found in many writers’ literary works, which expands temporally limiting definitions of identity (vii). They explain how cross-written texts “activate a traffic between phases of life we persist in regarding as opposites” and discuss how Maurice Sendak’s particular skill at “maintain[ing] contact with ‘the psychic reality of [his] own childhood’ shapes an original classic such as Where the Wild Things Are” (Lanes [247] quoted in Knoepflmacher and Myers viii). Similar to the psychological acuity that distinguishes Sendak’s work and his “wonderful understanding of the interplay between adult and child,” Susan Cooper’s novel also reflects the creative return to a writer’s childhood interests (Knoepflmacher and Myers viii). Significantly, however, Cooper’s recollection and description of childhood spaces importantly extend the largely chronological definition of cross-writing. Knoepflmacher and Myers do mention how cross-written texts “rely on settings that dissolve the binaries and contraries that our culture has rigidified and fixed,” but their focus is primarily temporal (viii). Settings such as war, especially, can help authors productively challenge the temporally bound oppositions of child and adult, since children cannot be sheltered from knowledge of violence many readers associate with the experience of adulthood rather than the innocence of childhood. Indeed, in her later work on children’s literature about war, Myers makes clear that “[m]ore … perhaps, than any other genre, war stories embody techniques of ‘cross-writing’ that make permeable the boundaries between ‘fiction’ and ‘history’ and between audiences of children and adults” (333). Indeed, the publishing history of Dawn of Fear reflects how war stories trouble the boundaries between child and adult readers. Susan Cooper initially titled the novel The Camp and was unsuccessful getting it published as an adult work. Her editor declared it a “children’s book,” and advised her “to cut some over-adult reflective passages” as well as give it a new title (“Susan Cooper” 77). Although this history reveals the proximity of Sandra Beckett’s term “crossover” (2009; 2011) to cross-writing...

The epidermal growth factor receptor variant III (EGFRvIII): where wild things are altered

The epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) is overexpressed in a variety of human epithelial tumors, often as a consequence of gene amplification. Tumors with EGFR gene amplification frequently contain EGFR gene rearrangements, with the most common extracellular domain mutation being EGFRvIII. This mutation leads to a deletion of exons 2-7 of the EGFR gene and renders the mutant receptor incapable of binding any known ligand. Despite this, EGFRvIII displays low-level constitutive signaling that is augmented by reduced internalization and downregulation. Aberrant EGFRvIII signaling has been shown to be important in driving tumor progression and often correlates with poor prognosis. It is clear that EGFRvIII is expressed in a considerable proportion of patients with glioblastoma multiforme (GBM). The presence of EGFRvIII in other tumor types, however, remains controversial. In this review, we critically analyze the evidence for the expression of EGFRvIII in a range of tumor types and discuss recent findings pertinent to its function and biology in GBM.

Wild things in urban places: America's largest cities and multi-scales of governance for endangered species conservation

Endangered species live inside the world's most densely populated cities. In the United States, the Fish and Wildlife Service is responsible for the protection and recovery of endangered species – wherever those species are found. Unfortunately, very little is known about urban endangered species policy or programs. This paper presents a comparative analysis of the five largest cities in the United States and examines issue of governance around conservation. Cities have a responsibility to steward the environment, but through the 1973 Endangered Species Act, the Fish and Wildlife Service has a legal mandate to protect endangered species throughout the country. Thus, this paper asks: What is the USFWS doing inside cities to recover endangered species? What are cities doing? Conservation is a shared duty but it is not clear that anyone is taking responsibility for urban endangered species.

‘Clever Enough to Do Variations’: Sendak as Visual Musician

Maurice Sendak identified three of his picturebooks, Where the Wild Things Are, In the Night Kitchen, and Outside Over There, as a trilogy. This essay explores the variational relationships of their images and themes and of the events they describe in order to determine how the three books relate to and connect with each other.

Monsters and music: The private worlds of Maurice Sendak and Oliver Knussen

Abstract This article traces the process of composition of the opera version of Where the Wild Things Are, libretto and set and costume designs by Maurice Sendak and music by Oliver Knussen. The article looks in particular at how elements in early drafts of Where the Wild Things Are – especially motifs in a version entitled Where the Wild Horses Are – which were deleted from the published text of Where the Wild Things Are were reintroduced into the opera. The article also compares the early lives of both Sendak and the composer Knussen, and reflects on their shared tastes in music for children and the success of their collaboration.