Outside Over There

As I was looking through my library yesterday for children’s books on sibling issues, I came across one of my favorite books that is still as remarkable today as it was when it was published in1981. The book is Outside Over There by Maurice Sendak. Thinking I would write this blog on strong female characters in children’s books, I went to Amazon to check if Outside Over There was still in print. It is - but I also found an interesting assortment of “comments” about the book.

In my opinion, the book is pure poetry with the deep emotional truth of a classic fairy tale with a fearless female main character who saves her baby sister. I believe Outside Over There has the same emotional power for older preschoolers as Where the Wild Things Are, also by Maurice Sendak. Both books take children on an inner journey through challenging emotional situations of abandonment and powerlessness.

Bruno Bettelheim wrote about the emotional power of fairy tales in his book The Uses of Enchantment claiming that fairy tales capture the emotional struggles of each stage of development and that classic storytelling allows children to experience what cannot be expressed in rational thought. In the story of Outside Over There, the developmental issues might be: the wish to “lose” a sibling, the desire to “save the day”, the belief that parallel realities of good and evil coexist in the sometimes very confusing world of childhood. All of this occurs in the magic of thirty short pages. But the ending is as hopeful and resolute as “and it was still hot”, the perfect ending of Where the Wild Things Are that reassures every disobedient child that she is loved and cared for no matter what.

The “comments” section on Amazon, however, showed me that not everyone would agree. Some parent readers found Outside Over There “creepy”. In a world of Disney images, I urge parents and children story tellers to stretch beyond one-dimensional stories. Try a book like Outside Over There and watch how your child reacts. Is your child engaged by the pictures or the language? Does your child want to revisit the book or the story? Watch your child’s body language – when a child hears a story that ties into his emotional world, you will see it in his body. Your child will tell you which books meet his developmental needs.

For a great list of children’s books, check out www.turnthepage.com.