The Wild Things

When I was five years old, my school did a spring concert in which my class performed Maurice Sendak’s WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE. Sometime after the concert, we all drew pictures based on the story which were then published in the school magazine at the end of the year. Thanks to my Mum’s archiving, I still have that school magazine from a LONG time ago. By way of a tribute to Mr. Sendak who passed away on Tuesday, here’s my picture from that magazine:

(The writing says “Here are three wild things out of our concert.” Before you cringe at the spelling, the words are actually spelled that way deliberately. The school I attended used a phonics-based reading and writing system for the infant classes (ages 5 and 6) called I.T.A. (“Initial Teaching Alphabet”). The system made reading and writing more consistent by using the same symbols to represent each sound. We moved house the following year, which meant I started going to a different school, but I don’t recall having a problem with “real” spelling. In fact, my reading skills were a good few years ahead of my age group.)