Its Message: Prepare Kids

“In the Dumps” is Maurice Sendak’s first book in 10 years. Besides jolting folks with its social realism, the work also has invited layers upon layers of speculation about its hidden social messages.

When street kids Jack and Guy take in the starving--or as one reviewer put it, “the frightfully slender”--Somalian baby, is Sendak endorsing gay adoptions?

When the big, benevolent moon hands the baby down to the boys, is this the image of Christ being taken down from the cross? Do the smoke-belching factories in the background symbolize the Holocaust ovens?

“Enough!” says Sendak. “This is a simple story that had its origins in a jarring scene I saw on a beautiful Los Angeles street back in 1991. I saw two small, dirty feet sticking out of a cardboard box on the sidewalk, and I knew I had to do something with this image.

“That’s it. That’s all of it. This is a passionate plea . . . to take care of children, not to assume they don’t know what’s out there, but to give them the weaponry to face what is.”