(3) K-3 Illustrated by Maurice Sendak. In this mild fantasy a boy discovers a big green book of spells which enables him to retaliate against the aunt and uncle with whom he lives in boring tranquility. The story is slight, but the cross-hatched black-and-white illustrations reinforce Sendak's reputation for technical skill combined with visual imagination as the artist once more delights in the triumph of a small child in an adult world.

Reviewer: The Horn Book, Inc. | Horn Book Magazine Issue: July, 1985

(2) K-3 Illustrated by Maurice Sendak. Presto and Zesto find themselves in Limboland just in time for the wedding of the sugar beets. But what can they bring for a gift? The droll (but overextended and arbitrary) text includes lots of wordplay. The watercolor illustrations are united in their tone, style, and sense of fun. A note by Yorinks explains how the story came to be, how it was lost, and how it came back together after Sendak's death.

Reviewer: Roger Sutton | Horn Book Magazine Issue: September, 2018

(2) K-3 Illustrated by Maurice Sendak. A full moon on a summer night turns an ordinary landscape into a world of mystery for four lively children. Black-and-white drawings and brief text alternate with double-page spreads in luminous color. Sendak's pictures bring the night alive, and readers will imagine they can feel grass against bare feet, soft wind tossing hair and cooling faces.

Reviewer: The Horn Book, Inc. | Horn Book Magazine Issue: June, 1959

(2) PS Paper engineering by Matthew Reinhart. Scenario by Arthur Yorinks. A mad scientist's laboratory provides the setting for this elaborately constructed pop-up collaboration with a sweet and simple premise. A young boy in blue jammies descends into this ostensible den of horrors to look for his mother; along the way he defangs a succession of horror-movie staples. The consummate staging of this production doesn't mask the mischief at its heart.

Reviewer: Christine M. Heppermann | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 2006

(2) PS Illustrated by Maurice Sendak. In Sendak's exploration of the line between fantasy and reality, the jacket, pre-title page, and title page set up a book-long chase between a boy (the image of Max in his wolf suit) and his kidnapped teddy bear through crowds of life-sized bears. Broad spreads, upfront composition, simplicity of rendering, and pacing suit this to the very young. The hide-and-seek romping offers much to discover.

Reviewer: Joanna Rudge Long | Horn Book Magazine Issue: July, 2005

(2) K-3 Illustrated by Maurice Sendak. In this tall tale, the people of Troekan love their village's constant rain. When the rain inexplicably stops, they seek advice from a wise man, a scientist, and a philosopher, to no avail. Two children finally come up with a solution. Sendak's black-and-white illustrations of a timeless eastern European village add to the folkloric flavor of his brother's text.

Reviewer: Terri Schmitz | Horn Book Magazine Issue: October, 1956

(2) K-3 Illustrated by Maurice Sendak. After the opera by Hans Krása and Adolf Hoffmeister. This collaboration re-creates the story line of a Czech opera written by a concentration camp inmate and performed there by children whom the Nazis later murdered. The text is bursting with sound effects, including libretto verse and surprise narrative rhyming. Viewers familiar with the artist's work will recognize pieces of Sendakian iconography and stagecraft throughout. At whatever level it's absorbed, this publishing event emanates a unique magnetic quality.

Reviewer: Betsy Hearne | Horn Book Magazine Issue: January, 2004

(2) 4-6 Translated by Lore Segal. Illustrated by Maurice Sendak & Maurice Sendak. Originally published as a slipcased two-volume set, then in paperback in 1976 as a joint volume, The Juniper Tree is here published in a handsome hardcover edition that will please Grimm and Sendak fans.

Reviewer: The Horn Book, Inc. | Horn Book Magazine Issue: April, 1974

(2) 1-3 Illustrated by Maurice Sendak. This quiet story describes the wondering quest of a young circus girl, Flora, who has dreams about the people outside the circus and then makes an excursion into their world to see what they're like. Maurice Sendak's drawings create a lingering enchantment.

Reviewer: The Horn Book, Inc. | Horn Book Magazine Issue: December, 1957

(2) 1-3 Translated by Seymour Barofsky. Illustrated by Maurice Sendak. In a brief but touching first-person narrative, Maurice Sendak's father describes how he left Poland for America. He then relates a naive, moralistic tale in which a grandfather teaches values to his grandson. Images in this shtetl fairy tale fly by as if in a Chagall dream; lovingly rendered drawings add a dimension of magic to the simple story.

Reviewer: The Horn Book, Inc. | Horn Book Magazine Issue: January, 1986

(2) 4-6 Translated by Ralph Manheim. Illustrated by Maurice Sendak. Familiar in part because it forms the basis of the famous ballet, Hoffmann's tale "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King" is actually quite different from the ballet. The original story is a mysterious, powerful, and slightly grotesque tale. Some of the illustrations, spectacular and remarkably effective, are taken from Sendak's stage settings for the ballet.

Reviewer: The Horn Book, Inc. | Horn Book Magazine Issue: January, 1985

(2) PS Illustrated by Maurice Sendak. A little boy knows just what a Very Special House should be. It would have a bed to bounce on, a table ("very special where to put your feet feet feet"), and it would be a place to bring any friends--a lion, a giant, some monkeys. Best of all, it would always suggest "MORE MORE MORE"; "NOBODY ever says stop stop stop." The exuberant drawings running over each page are made for lingering looks and chuckles.

Reviewer: The Horn Book, Inc. | Horn Book Magazine Issue: December, 1953

(2) PS Illustrated by Maurice Sendak. In dreamy, childlike prose, Krauss describes Charlotte's love for her colt Milky Way--spring comes, Milky Way grows, and Charlotte's father wants to sell him. The father relents when Charlotte pleads for the horse. Sendak's illustrations, some of their colors deepened for this new edition, add to the mystique with their antique tints and curious outside-in perspective.

Reviewer: Anita L. Burkam | Horn Book Magazine Issue: October, 1955

(3) PS Illustrated by Maurice Sendak. Brought to life by Sendak's watercolors, Krauss's understated text voices an imaginative plan for re-doing the colors that surround the young narrator, from painting the ceilings green to making "a house like a rainbow." Without rhyme or fixed meter, the poetic words might be mannered were they by a less accomplished writer.

Reviewer: Frieda F. Bostian

(3) PS Illustrated by Maurice Sendak. Though Krauss and Sendak have had many imitators, their work in this reissue often holds the line against the sentimentality these imitations display. Krauss's whimsical text consists of maxims a child--a very cerebral child--might espouse ("A baby is very convenient to be"), and Sendak's line drawings of children realize and extend those maxims happily.

Reviewer: Frieda F. Bostian

(2) K-3 Illustrated by Maurice Sendak. In short poems, plays, and songs, Ruth Krauss displays an uncanny ability to capture the language of childhood: "I love the sun / I love a house / I love a river / And a hill where I watch / and a song I heard / and a dream I made." Sendak's pen-and-ink drawings enhance and amplify the minimal text in this welcome reissue.

Reviewer: Terri Schmitz | Horn Book Magazine Issue: December, 1954

(2) 4-6 Translated by Isaac Bashevis Singer. Illustrated by Maurice Sendak. This Newbery Honor Book is a welcome reissue. The seven stories have the poetic power of folktales and provide insight into the world of early-twentieth-century middle-European rural Jewish life.

Reviewer: The Horn Book, Inc. | Horn Book Magazine Issue: December, 1966

(2) K-3 Illustrated by Maurice Sendak. This welcome reissue tells the story of Lori's many misadventures trying to get to Times Square on various modes of transportation, with a slow-moving turtle finally bearing him off.

Reviewer: Terri Schmitz | Horn Book Magazine Issue: October, 1963

(4) 1-3 Illustrated by Maurice Sendak. A philistine wolf's appetite for pigs is transformed into an appetite for art in this posthumously published burlesque. The story is perfectly coherent, but wordy, with only a few of the distinctive touches one would expect from a James Marshall text. Sendak's illustrations are cluttered and oddly lacking in depth, making it difficult at times to decipher the content of the picture.

Reviewer: Martha V. Parravano | Horn Book Magazine Issue: July, 1999