<P> He replaced the horses with caricatures of his aunts and uncles, caricatures that he had originally drawn in his youth as an escape from their chaotic weekly visits, on Sunday afternoons, to his family's Brooklyn home . Sendak, as a child, had observed his relatives as being "all crazy--crazy faces and wild eyes", with blood - stained eyes and "big and yellow" teeth, who pinched his cheeks until they were red . These relatives, like Sendak's parents, were poor Jewish immigrants from Poland, whose remaining family in Europe were killed during the Holocaust while Sendak was in his early teens . As a child, however, he saw them only as "grotesques". </P> <P> When working on the 1983 opera adaptation of the book with Oliver Knussen, Sendak gave the monsters the names of his relatives: Tzippy, Moishe, Aaron, Emile, and Bernard . </P> <P> According to Sendak, at first, the book was banned in libraries and received negative reviews . It took about two years for librarians and teachers to realize that children were flocking to the book, checking it out over and over again, and for critics to relax their views . Since then, it has received high critical acclaim . Francis Spufford suggests that the book is "one of the very few picture books to make an entirely deliberate and beautiful use of the psychoanalytic story of anger". Mary Pols of Time magazine wrote that "(w) hat makes Sendak's book so compelling is its grounding effect: Max has a tantrum and in a flight of fancy visits his wild side, but he is pulled back by a belief in parental love to a supper' still hot,' balancing the seesaw of fear and comfort ." New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis noted that "there are different ways to read the wild things, through a Freudian or colonialist prism, and probably as many ways to ruin this delicate story of a solitary child liberated by his imagination ." In Selma G. Lanes's book The Art of Maurice Sendak, Sendak discusses Where the Wild Things Are along with his other books In the Night Kitchen and Outside Over There as a sort of trilogy centered on children's growth, survival, change, and fury . He indicated that the three books 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 ." </P> <P> Based on a 2007 online poll, the National Education Association named the book one of its "Teachers' Top 100 Books for Children". Five years later School Library Journal sponsored a survey of readers which identified Where the Wild Things Are as top picture book . Elizabeth Bird, the NYPL librarian who conducted the survey, observed that there was little doubt it would be voted number one and highlighted its designation by one reader as a watershed, "ushering in the modern age of picture books". Another called it "perfectly crafted, perfectly illustrated...simply the epitome of a picture book" and noted that Sendak "rises above the rest in part because he is subversive". President Barack Obama has read it aloud for children attending the White House Easter Egg Roll in multiple years . </P>

When was where the wild things are banned