The best thing on the picture book trolley, and it isn't close

You can't read this one badly. I have heard it read by a terrified student teacher, by a caretaker covering a wet break, and by a boy in Year 6 who could hardly decode a word of it, and every time the thing survived. The book does the work.

Sendak understood something almost nothing else on that trolley understood, which is that small children are frequently and genuinely furious, and that the fury is not naughtiness waiting to be corrected. Max goes, Max reigns, Max comes home, and the supper is still hot. He manages all of that without using the word love once.

Three double-page spreads with no text on them at all. Try getting that past a publisher now!

The parents who objected in my first year objected to the wolf suit, of all things. Mr Sowerby said something unrepeatable about them in the staffroom, and repeat it I shall not.

I bought a copy for Ruth, then for Ruth's two, and I shall buy another when the third one is ready. You cannot argue with something that survives three goes at one family.