Outside Over There facts for kids
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| Author | Maurice Sendak |
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| Illustrator | Sendak |
| Cover artist | Sendak |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Picture book |
| Publisher | Lothrop, Lee and Shepard Books |
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Publication date
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October 19, 1981 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 40 pp |
| ISBN | 0-06-443185-1 |
Outside Over There is a picture book for kids written and illustrated by Maurice Sendak. It tells the story of a young girl named Ida. She has to rescue her baby sister after the baby is taken by goblins. Sendak described this book as part of a group of three stories. These books show how children grow up, from In the Night Kitchen (for toddlers) to Where the Wild Things Are (for preschoolers) and then Outside Over There (for kids around 12-15).
About the Story
Ida's father is away at sea. Each night, Ida plays her horn to help her baby sister fall asleep. One night, while Ida is playing her horn, she isn't watching the baby closely. Goblins sneak in through the window and steal her baby sister. They leave behind a "changeling" made of ice.
The ice changeling melts in Ida's arms. Ida quickly realizes what has happened. She blows her special horn and puts on her mother's yellow rain cloak. Then she sets off to find her baby sister. But she leaves the window backwards, which makes her enter a strange place called Outside Over There. Here, she cannot find the goblins or her sister.
Suddenly, she hears her father's voice telling her to turn around into the rain. She does, and she finds the goblins. They have turned into babies and are having a wedding! To find her real sister among all the crying babies, Ida plays a beautiful tune on her horn. The goblins start to dance wildly. They dance so much that they fall into a stream. Ida then picks up her sister and heads back home. Her mother has received a letter from her father. In the letter, he promises to come home one day and asks Ida to keep watching over her sister.
Where the Idea Came From
In a film about Maurice Sendak, he talked about something that happened when he was four years old in 1932. He learned about a famous event where a baby was taken from its home. This experience showed him that children could be in danger. Sendak later put these feelings into many of his books.
Outside Over There was especially inspired by this event. In the book, a child is taken from its crib through a window, just like in the real-life event. One of the pictures of the lost baby in the book even looks like the real baby from that time. The idea of a protective older sister comes from Sendak's own childhood. His older sister was his main caregiver and playmate when he was young.
Awards and Honors
Outside Over There has won several important awards:
- National Book Award for Children's Books, Picture Books (hardcover)
- School Library Journal Best Book
- Caldecott Honor Book
- Horn Book Fanfare
- Library of Congress Children's Books
In Movies and Music
The 1986 film Labyrinth, made by Jim Henson, was partly inspired by this book. The movie's ending credits even say that Jim Henson was influenced by Maurice Sendak's work.
The book also appears in the 2003 Japanese film Café Lumière. In the movie, the main character, a young Japanese student named Yoko, uses the book to understand a dream she had.
English singer-songwriter Will Varley has a song called "Outside Over There" on his 2015 album Postcards From Ursa Minor. The song was inspired by the book.
In Victor Lavalle's 2017 book, The Changeling, the main character reads parts of Outside Over There. He does this to try and understand why his own son disappeared.
