Fans of googly-eyed monsters and the active senior lifestyle rejoice: 82-year-old Where The Wild Things Are creator Maurice Sendak has a new book coming out this fall called Bumble Ardy, the first one he's both written and illustrated since 1981's Outside Over There. Here's what we know so far about the project, which Sendak revealed this morning in an interview with The Wall Street Journal's Katherine Rosman.

It will be about pigs--pigs who like to party

No little kids or wild rumpus-causing monsters in this one. The main character is Bumble, an orphaned 9-year-old pig who "invites over a styful of pigs for a costume party" and gets more than he bargained for when they start going wild. (The character was originally supposed to be a human boy but Sendak "changed the character's species, reasoning that "boys tend, generally speaking, to be pigs."

It will be loosely based on this 1971 Sesame Street animated short

 

It will probably be scary

In 2009, Sendak told parents who thought the Where The Wild Things Are movie was too scary that they could "go to hell." Keeping with the spirit of these remarks, The Journal reports Ardy's birth parents are slaughtered and eaten in the book's prologue.

The pigs will drink brine, not wine.

Sendak changed the drunk pigs beverage of choice from wine to brine. "I didn't think I could get away with wine in this day and age," he explained.

It will be a pretty big children's publishing event

Publishing house HarperCollins has ordered an initial 500,000 copy print run. By way of comparison, last year's Caldecott winner, A Sick Day For Amos Lee, had 100,000.

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Ray Gustini