Wild Gifts: Anger Management and Moral Development in the Fiction of Ursula K. Le Guin and Maurice Sendak (Critical Essay‪)‬

Although they have never met in person, Ursula K. Le Guin and Maurice Sendak were born within a year of each other, Sendak in 1928, Le Guin in 1929. Both came of age after World War II, both were profoundly influenced by Jungian psychology. Both were doing powerful, influential work in their fields by the end of the sixties. Le Guin published her first short story, "An Die Musik" in 1961. Rocannon's World came out in 1966, A Wizard of Earthsea in 1968, and The Left Hand of Darkness in 1969. Sendak's Caldecott winner, Where the Wild Things Are, was published in 1963, In the Night Kitchen, in 1970. It is not surprising then that there are strong similarities both in their subjects and their approaches. In reading Le Guin's novel Gifts (2004), it became obvious to me that there are substantial structural and thematic corollaries between it and Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are. In June 2005 after hearing this paper read at SFRA in Las Vegas, Le Guin mentioned that she was familiar with Sendak's work and had read his Nutshell Library to her children; however, she suggested that any similarities between the books would be because both were following "a well trodden path." Sendak's book begins