He received the 1964 Caldecott Medal for Where the Wild Things Are and is the creator of such classics as In the Night Kitchen, Outside Over There, Higglety Pigglety Pop!, and Nutshell Library.
As I mentioned last week in my post about Alligators All Around, I am most impressed by Sendak's ability to make his figures look like two things at once - alligators and lions, a boy and a cooking pot. My other favorite is that August page, where the little boy transforms into a pot on the stove, and yet still manages to maintain the same facial features as his human self. The first is March, when the wind spills the soup, then "laps it up and roars for more." I can remember being obsessed with that page in the classroom big book of this story, and enjoying the way the wind looked like it was alive. Though I love the entire book - for nostalgia's sake as much as anything else - I do have two favorite pages. Chicken soup is a food almost everyone has eaten at one time or another, so the theme of the books feels very familiar and universal, but each monthly chicken soup experience could only come from the mind of someone like Sendak. Like In the Night Kitchen and Where the Wild Things Are, this book really demonstrates Sendak's unique and surreal outlook on childhood imagination. Finally, the year ends with a "baubled bangled Christmas tree" decorated with soup bowls. In July, he looks into the "cool and fishy deep" to find that "chicken soup is selling cheap" and in August, he becomes a cooking pot, and heats up chicken soup himself. In February, he celebrates his "snowman's anniversary" (maybe the greatest concept for a holiday ever) by eating soup while the snowman eats cake. In January, the boy in the story eats his soup on ice skates. The book takes us through the entire year using various references and analogies to chicken soup.
We also listened to the Carole King recording of the song so many times, that even today, I have it memorized. Decker, would copy the poem for each month onto big easel paper and we would all read it together as a class.
My fondest memory of Chicken Soup with Rice comes from my first grade classroom.
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