What on Earth is the connection between The Bible and Maurice Sendak's book Where the Wild Things Are?

The link is Puke Ariki's new temporary exhibition, The Secret Garden.

Both these classic books feature the creation of a secret garden.

Some believe the Garden of Eden to be the first, and most secret garden of all.

The purpose of this garden was to provide a space for the beginning of life on Earth.

The all-knowing God also made Eden the setting for paradise to be lost – for Eve to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

But perhaps Eve deserves more credit for this than she is usually given. She may have realised that within the perfect garden nothing could grow or change – it was a stagnant environment that held her and Adam prisoners.

Therefore does the act of eating the apple and thus, having her eyes "opened … knowing good and evil" mean that she was simply pro-choice about living? While the expulsion was a punishment, it was also liberation.

Max dons his wolf suit and terrorises his mother, who sends him to bed without any supper.

He refuses to remain imprisoned in his room and escapes through his own imagination.

His secret wild garden grows in his room until "his ceiling hung with vines and the walls became the world all around". This wild world sets the scene for his journey to becoming King of Where the Wild Things Are.

While this seems the perfect adventure for Max, he soon tires of it. 

Both these gardens are paradises and are perfect while they are inhabited. But is too much of a good thing boring? Would you hunger for more?

Both Eve and Max abandon their secret gardens for food, one for an apple of knowledge, the other a hot dinner.

Enter The Secret Garden at Puke Ariki to learn about creating a garden paradise – if that is what you seek.