Illustrating two traditional, though unfamiliar, nursery rhymes in the light of current realities, Sendak's latest picture book opens with a scene of homeless urban children and kittens living outside in makeshift box shelters. When rats steal the kittens and one small child, the others kids try to win him back in a game of cards. The rats cheat, the children lose, and the captives are taken away to a bakery/orphanage. Aided by the full moon, which transforms itself into a huge white cat, Jack and Guy (two of the homeless boys) rescue and feed the child. In a dreamlike sequence, the children and kittens go up to the moon, then return to the city scene where the tale began. Structurally, the book resembles Hector Protector and As I Went Over the Water (1965), in which Sendak illustrated two brief nursery rhymes, interpreting and extending their nonsense with characters' words in cartoon-style balloons and a visual narrative that young children found absorbing and entertaining. Echoes of Sendak's earlier books occur throughout, from the wild thing T-shirt worn by a homeless child, to the characters yelling RASCAL THIEF (Hector Protector , to the night sky and labeled cartoons (In the Night Kitchen , to Mozart (Outside, Over There , to Iona Opie (I Saw Esau . Some references have contemporary social significance, such as those relating to the homeless, city shelters, extremes of poverty and wealth, AIDS, famine, hunger, and child abuse. Others are undoubtedly personal, though a few are much broader: for instance, the image of the kidnapped child as Gandhi and elsewhere as a Christ figure being taken down from the cross. Recognizing these references to social ills isn't crucial to appreciating the book; in fact, the opposite may be true. Although these images add complexity and resonance, the book is in danger of becoming somewhat ponderous under their weight. The second half of the tale is more successful as a picture book precisely because of the relative simplicity of its text and illustrations. Children are likely to find the art compelling and the story confusing. Adults may be bothered by the image of a rat about to bite a child, but kids will be more likely to question why the child ends up with a black eye in the next picture instead of tooth marks. A picture book needn't always be strictly logical or totally comprehensible. To succeed with kids, though, it had better make sense or clearly make nonsense. In the illustrations, Sendak creates a series of riveting images. Although always evident, his gift as an artist has grown over the years, and his respect for his children is undiminished. Jack and Guy are not stock heroic characters. They go to the rescue not because of sentimental or adventurous spirits, but because once chosen, they are capable of responding with spunk and even with love. The homeless kids form an almost wordless Greek chorus, fundamentally isolated figures moving together as they respond to adversity and even tragedy with dignity, hope, despair, and endurance. The scenes of Jack, Guy, the Moon/Cat, and the child are particularly powerful, bringing a sense of the wholeness and joy that can be found even in a broken and seemingly hopeless world. Libraries probably won't circulate many copies of this, and there will be a debate about where to shelve it. Some may yearn for the innocent charm of early Sendak books, but those are waiting in the library, still as unique and beautiful as ever. None of these considerations is really Sendak's concern; expressing his own vision is. Despite its ambiguities, We Are All in the Dumps will be read not only by parents and children, but also by the many who watch in fascination to see where Sendak's gifts and inclinations take him next. (Reviewed Sept. 15, 1993)

Harking back to Hector Protector (1965), Sendak again pairs two nursery rhymes; but this time, he penetrates deeply into society's ills in his elaborate visual extension of the words. We are all in the dumps/For diamonds are trumps/The kittens are gone to St. Paul's/The baby is bit/The moon's in a fit/And the houses are built without walls.'' Sendak sets this first rhyme in New York, where homeless children are watched over by an increasingly agitated moon and where two wicked rats build a house of cards, play for thepoor little kid'' (an appealing waif), and haul him, as well as the kittens, off to St. Paul's Bakery and Orphanage''—which resembles Auschwitz (glimpsed more subtly in Dear Mili). In the second part, Jack and Guy, who have earlier ignored the waif's pleas for help, follow after:Come says Jack/Let's knock him on the head/No says Guy/Let's buy him some bread...'' There's much more going on in the extraordinary art, including allusions visual (Trump Tower, a Cheshire cat moon that maternally enfolds the kittens) and verbal (in dialogue balloons and newsprint that also serves as shelter). Dear Mili's exquisitely detailed paintings give way here to the freely drawn, more immediate style of I Saw Esau (1992); but the subtle orchestration of Sendak's ideas has never been more intricate, telling, or playful. Adults may question presenting serious topics to children in this imaginative form. Lucky children have seen homelessness, and worse, only on TV; the unlucky have lived it. In this beautiful, passionately concerned book, Sendak creates visual poetry, rich in symbolism, that goes to the heart of such matters better than any earnest description. Once again, he explores new ground and offers a masterpiece. (Picture book. 4+)"

Gr 2 Up-Sendak is back, bolder than ever, as he looks out to the problems of today's world. He combines two little-known and unrelated nursery rhymes, taking advantage of their absence of story to interpret them with a wealth of detail and social commentary. In so doing, his visual images invite readers to become co-conspirators in the creation of the tale. From the dust jacket's ragged and newspaper-wrapped children, depicted within a monstrous mouth that readers will discover is the moon, to the very last page, one must search for clues to bring meaning to the enigmatic text. (Most are in the form of newspaper headlines). The homeless children and kittens are watched over by the moon, which seems to insist that the youngsters take care of one another. The moon itself is transformed into a giant cat to save the kittens and a baby from the rats who steal them. Unlike Max from Where the Wild Things Are (HarperCollins, 1988), however, their return is not to safety and a warm supper, but to the uncertainties of the street. Overall, the images refer to poverty, war, crime, pollution, famine, inflation, AIDS, unemployment, and other current evils. The illustrations themselves are not frightening, but they remind readers of horrific things in the real world. The somewhat muted and subdued palette is brightened with bursts of red sky and a stark white cat, which give an explosive energy to the story. The clarity of the art and of the composition of the pages are deceptively simple. The rhythms of the street, of rap music, are recognizable in the interplay between the rhymes and characters' ballooned comments. This is a potent, evocative book, but Sendak respects children's ability to deal with powerful and potentially controversial issues and ideas. We Are All in the Dumps will lead to discussion, speculation, and a variety of interpretations, all of which are appropriate for this type of allegory. This headline says it all: ``Leaner Times, Meaner Times...Children Triumph.''-Kay E. Vandergrift, School of Communication, Information and Library Studies, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ