What in the heck did I just read? The book barely made sense. In a way it reminds me of the David Bowie movie Labyrinth where the Goblin King comes and takes the baby away. Here the goblins take the baby away to marry the baby to a goblin. The sister comes in playing her horn, turns the goblins to steam and fights their way home again. According to the NYPL this book was banned for Nudity, religion, and witchcraft. Which okay….but….. I would not ban it for that. However, not liking the story, I would just have not bought it. ( )

This book used to creep me out when I was a child, and yet, still a favorite. ( )

Sendak's story of a younger sister stolen by goblins and returned by music is very reminiscent of classic fairy stories like Goblin Market. They are adventures and moral tales all at once, so clearly he is tapping into this tradition when he centres the story around the baby getting stolen by the sister's lack of attention. Playing her music again to tire the goblins into revealing the one true human baby is the sister's redemption in true fairytale style, so the story makes a nice thematic circle. I don't think that Sendak's illustrations quite held up to the whimsical nature of the tale though. The human characters are drawn too realistically to have as much charm as his later children protagonists, and the goblins are just faceless hooded beings and then babies which doesn't really endear them to readers through the typical comedy of the grotesque. ( )

Outside Over There is one of Maurice Sendak’s books that, like two others of his most famous works, Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen, take us into the world of a child’s dreams. The child faces some fierce obstacles, but comes out the better for them on the other side.

In this book, Ida is a young girl who is in charge of watching her baby sister while her father is at sea and her mother spends all her time in their arbor - watching for their father or depressed, or both. Ida doesn’t play close attention however and one day the baby is stolen by goblins. Ida climbs out her window, to a land called "outside over there,” to rescue her sibling.

She is successful of course, fulfilling her papa’s wishes, who just wrote to them:

“I’ll be home one day,
And my brave, bright little Ida
Must watch the baby and her Mama
For her Papa, who loves her always.”

According to Sendak, as reported in The Art of Maurice Sendak by Salma G. Lanes, this book was intended to form a unit with the thematically similar Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen. Sendak explained: ''They are all variations on the same theme: how children master various feelings - danger, boredom, fear, frustration, jealousy - and manage to come to grips with the realities of their lives.''

The illustrations, as always, are amazing - evocative, atmospheric, intriguing, and expressive.

Some may find the story too mysterious or “dark” for children; I found it a revelation. ( )

Definitely not a book to read to kids before bed. The goblins taking the baby and the ice baby are creepy! A bit spooky for kids. ( )