Betrayed by Chicken Soup: Judaism, Gender and Performance in Maurice Sendak's Really Rosie

In Maurice Sendak's film/book/play for children, Really Rosie, an extremely imaginative little girl named Rosie gets her playmates to pretend to be staging a show or making a movie on their Brooklyn street. She and her playmates use this performance event to explore their present situation as children growing up within Jewish culture and also to explore what their future lives might be, ultimately criticizing the roles (especially gender roles) that they see and seeking other possibilities through play and performance. Through this critique and transformation of American Jewish culture, Maurice Sendak and Carole King (his musical collaborator) both reflect and go beyond the discourse of contemporary adult Jewish artists and writers, placing this children's book within the context of an ongoing artistic conversation about Jewish-American identity.