The Wild Things book Eggers incorporated parts of his own boyhood into the character. The Wild Things The Wild Things is a 2009 full-length novel written by Dave Eggers and published by McSweeney's. The book is based on the screenplay of "Where the Wild Things Are" which Eggers co-wrote. The film is, in turn, based on Maurice Sendak's children's book "Where the Wild Things Are". According to the Acknowledgements of the novel, Eggers, who was asked by Spike Jonze to write the screenplay, was also asked by Sendak to write the novelization. He said his version is different, as Sendak's Max was based
Where the Wild Things Are be that of a child who, after a tantrum, is punished in his room and decides to escape to the place that gives the book its title, the "land of wild horses". Shortly before starting the illustrations, Sendak realized he did not know how to draw horses and, at the suggestion of his editor, changed the wild horses to the more ambiguous "Wild Things", a term inspired by the Yiddish expression "vilde chaya" ("wild animals"), used to indicate boisterous children. He replaced the horses with caricatures of his aunts and uncles, caricatures that he had originally drawn in his youth