Emily Gravett's chameleon

Image on opening page of Emily Gravett's website 

Happy New year!

I thought I'd start this year with a look at one of my favourite illustrators, Emily Gravett. There's an interesting article to be read in the Telegraph from 2007, which gives you an idea of how she began her life as an illustrator. 

What I love about her illustrations is that they are so skillfull - she's a good old fashioned drawer - and most of her books are brilliantly illustrated using crayon / graphite, with watercolour washes.  She also uses ripped paper collages in some titles.  Here's a great video of her drawing "Cave Baby" for a book she illustrated with Julia Donaldson (author of The Gruffalo)

I bought Wolves first, her debut book and an award winning title, and then it was just a case of collecting them -  lovely, lovely illustrations alongside a great sense of visual humour.  

I thought I'd share Blue Chameleon in my first post about her. It has a simple minimal text, and lovely sketchy illustrations.  Here you can see the covers, front and back, which introduce our hero, a sad looking, blue chameleon.  On the back cover there are three adjectives, each one crossed out, describing our chameleon and at the same time giving us a clue about what happens inside the book.  

As with all good picturebooks the endpapers contribute to the narrative, the front endpapers show us a glum looking pale chameleon.  And the copyright / dedication page is lovely too.   The information is shown in the shape of a chameleon!

And so the story continues with an image of chameleon, sitting in a pose similar to that on the front cover, with a thought bubble saying, "I'm lonely".  The words describe the chameleon "Blue chameleon", but blue is referring to his mood and his colour.   Each page has lots of white, which enhance the drawings and make them all the more stunning. The chameleon changes colour and shape depending on what he sees. And each time there's a speech bubble which brings something extra and humorous to each spread.  As you can see from the image below, the chameleon represents the colour, and each object is drawn and labelled neatly on each facing page.  We could say it was rather like a concept book, to reinforce colours and adjectives, but it's one with a difference for there's a story there too.  

As we turn the pages, visually there's always a pattern, the chameleon remains on the left and the object on the right. 

... and so the chameleon meets a pink cockatoo and says "Hello Hello Hello"; a swirly snail, and says "Nice to meet you"; 

... a brown boot (a cowboy boot) and says, "Howdy" of course!; a stripy sock and says "Can I hang out with you?"; a spotty ball (purple spots, which he imitates beautifully) and says "Pssst"; a gold fish, whose scales he cleverly captures, and he just blows silent bubbles.

Then finally he meets a green grasshopper  and he jumps across the double spread for the first time, breaking the visual routine, it's quite shocking to see him in desperation, with a stripy yellow / green belly, imitating the grasshopper and calling out, "Come back".  Poor chameleon.

And that's it.  He gives up.  We see him lying on a rock, all grey. Holding his head and visibly sighing. Notice how the words have returned to left and right, but the chameleon is mostly on the right hand, recto page. 

The penultimate page is all white, "White page", but if you look closely you can see a relief outline of the chameleon lying down and a hand is extended from off page, a hand similar to chameleon's, and a speech bubble "Hello?". That question mark is all important.  I've mentioned speech bubbles before, but children love them in this book and they begin reading them very quickly.  They certainly notice the question mark as it is the first bit of punctuation so far. And yikes, turn the page.   "Colourful chameleons"  greeting one another. 

A great ending, and the back endpapers contribute.  Different from the front ones, showing the two, colourful chameleons and a butterfly.  Off they go, no longer lonely.  Hooray!

Couldn't get much simpler really and such humour too.  Younger kids love this title and chant the colours and objects along with you after just a few readings.  They also enjoy listening to what the chameleon says, and laughing at the jokes.  "Pssst" is their favourite! 

Petr Horácek and pre-school books: part 3 (the Christmas goose)

Don't worry I shan't be cooking Suzy for Christmas!  (My son always asks for a beef stew, cooked for hours in port and Guinness ... much nicer!)  But our Suzy Goose does make a good Christmas story and an apt posting for the last of my December musings. And so here is Suzy Goose and the Christmas star 

Petr Horácek's Suzy is the same cut out goose with visible pencil lines around the edge, but his backgrounds are much looser in this picturebook.  You can see from the front page here that his Christmas tree is very jaggedy, as though he's used a spatular to paint.  But it does give us a lovely outdoor feel and the snow looks wonderland-like, thick and loose. 

The front endpapers are indeed whole pages of snow, with symmetrical snowflakes drawn here and there.  In fact, there is so much snow that when you turn to the dedication and title pages, it's just as profuse.  We see Suzy under the title, marching in her headlong manner into the book's following pages. 

Suzy and her friends are gathered around a tree.  The illustrations show us several geese and charming illustrations of a cow, a pig and a donkey, standing outside a warm looking stable.  Indeed.  The Christmas tree is lovely, but they all agree that something is missing.  "It needs a star on top," honked Suzy.  "Just like the one in the sky.  I'll get it." 

A lovely blotchy night sky and her geese friends are quite different, drawn in wax and painted over in the night sky blue.  They look ghostly.   And off goes Suzy, she dived from the top of the hill, slid down super fast and "Whoooosh flew high in the sky."  She is really a comet goose!  But isn't it a great illustration?  Children notice the words "Whoooosh" as it's part of the illustration and will point it out. 

We all know it's impossible to get a star by whooshing.  And of course Suzy didn't get "... quite high enough. Splat!"  But she had another plan. She climbed onto a fence.  Here is the lovely four framed spread, showing the sequence of actions ..."But not quite high enough. Splat!" The kids will notice "Splat" too! 

She also tries climbing a pile of logs, again there are four frames showing the sequence of actions, "But not quite high enough. Splat!" So now she thinks she'll just walk towards it.  She really is a convincing 'Silly Goose!'  We can see snow and the star, almost obliterated in the top corner of the double spread.   And then when we turn over... yikes, no star, and poor Suzy Goose is snow bound, and just a bit sad.

"I can't reach the star and I'm very far from my friends." 

 And here she is  all alone. "She was lost."  

The children will have accompanied Suzy in feeling positive and full of good ideas to feeling down right glum.  Petr Horácek successfully brings us to a climax here.  Brrr it does look cold, what's going to happen to silly Suzy? 

That's when she hears a noise, "Ding, Honk, Ding, Honk".  We know the 'Honk' belongs to her  goosey friends, but the 'Ding'?  Well I didn't show you the page, but the friendly cow has a nice bell around her neck! But it is a good puzzle for the children, as they are at first stumped by this sound, which isn't animal like at all. Also beware... animal sounds change in different languages.    So 'honk' is odd too if you haven't already played with animal sounds. 

And we see Suzy retrace her steps, walking, climbing the pile of logs, going over the fence and finally up the hill she so gracefully whoooosed down!  A lovely way to remember the sequence. And of course every one is very happy to see Suzy.  But it was her goosey friends who help her find the star in the end, for they were craning their necks upwards, and sure enough, the star was sitting right on top of the Christmas tree. 

"And it looked magical!"

"'Happy Christmas,' honked Suzy Goose with all her friends." 

They are all in the shed now, warm and safe and ready for Christmas. And when we turn to close the book and we turn to the back endpapers, that wonderland-snow scene, and there's a star blinking at us in the top right hand corner. Lovely!

A simple story but what wonderful snowy creations Horácek has given us, using his lovely painterly brush, allowing bits of blue to show through his snowy pages imitating that special reflection of the world that snow has.  No need to do anything but tell this story and tell it many times over.  Children love the silliness of Suzy and her sound effects, and they can feel that cold snow too.  A super pre-school Christmas book! 

All that's left is for me to say is, "Thank you for reading my blog over the last seven months, festive greetings to you and happy 2011!"

Petr Horácek and pre-school books: part 2 (the goose)

... and here she is, Petr Horácek's goose.  Suzy goose has appeared in three   of his picturebooks, Silly Suzy Goose, Look out Suzy Goose! and Suzy Goose and the Christmas star.  In this post, I'll be talking about the first of these to be published, Silly Suzy Goose.  But before I go into the pictures I'd like to mention the title, my thoughts are prompted by the Portuguese translation , 'Ganso Gastão'.  In English our protagonist is a girl goose, has to be, her name is Suzy and goose is female, gander is male.  In Portuguese our Suzy becomes 'Gastão', a boy's name, it rhymes better with 'ganso' (goose). But we lose the reference to an expression inherent in the title, "silly goose" which has another meaning in English.  A silly goose is a silly person, and this is important to understanding our story, for Suzy is indeed silly - silly because she's not satisfied with being a goose, she wants to be like other animals, she wants to be different.  

We are told this on the back cover, accompanying an illustration of Suzy hanging upside down like a bat we can read, "Ever wanted to be different? Suzy Goose has - she squawks like a toucan, swims like a seal and jumps like a kangaroo.  But when she tries to Rroarrr like a lion, she gets more than she's bargained for."  

As in all good picturebooks, Petr Hoácek uses the peritext nicely. The endpapers are a wonderfully deep painted orange, using tones of orange and yellow, reflecting the orange we see in Suzy's beak and feet.  

The title page shows Suzy and a flamingo.  Both on one leg, one looking graceful the other a tad silly!   There are no flamingos in the story, so this is no repetition of an image from another part of the book, as is sometimes the case.  Instead it is giving us one more (although we only really think about it once we've read the book) animal that Suzy is trying to imitate, preparing us for what to find on the following pages.   

Suzy is just like all the other geese, here she is amongst the flock. We know which one Suzy is as she's got a little more space and her large orange feet are visible.  Notice how deadpan the geese are, no textures, just plain white bodies and bright orange beaks and feet.   If you look back at the title page, you'll see that the flamingo is beautifully textured, and you'll notice throughout that there is a contrast between the geese and the other animals.  Suzy's body is a cut out figure, we can even see the outline to cut around.  She's made of white paper, no texture, nothing.  Her legs and feet are textured, painted and scratched with orange and red paint. All the other animals in the book are illustrated using this the painterly, scratchy technique, as are the backgrounds.  The contrast emphasizes the difference between Suzy and the other animals, possibly reinforcing the impossible in Suzy's attempts to be like them. 

Suzy tries flapping her wings like a bat (upside down!), squawking like a toucan, sliding like a penguin, stretching up high like a giraffe (the giraffe is so tall we need to turn the page to portrait so he fits in!) She tries to splish splash like an elephant, jump like a kangaroo, run like an osterich, and swim under the sea like a seal.  Suzy is seen riding on the animals' backs, in their pouches, or trying hard to do what they do. My favourite is this last spread. 

The illustration invites us to jump into the dark, green water, which turns slighly lighter, as though a light is shining from above, where Suzy is trying hard to swim with her head under water.  A lovely page.  

But we know from the back cover that Suzy also tries to imitate a lion, and when she does ... Goodness Suzy gets a fright!   

So she yells and stretches, swims, jumps, splashes, slides, and flaps, doing everything the other animals do,  all the way back to her flock, where she feels safe - safety in numbers and anonymity!   Can you see how Peter Horácek has used the wax crayon technique to create a watery splashy image in this illustration? 

"Perhaps it is better to be just like everyone else, thought Suzy Goose..." And we think that maybe she has learned a lesson, but when we turn the page we see her pretending to be a lion, but in the safety of her flock!  "Rroarrhonk!"  A lovely spread looking very like the first one, where we are introduced to Suzy, who is much like the other geese... but we see she is different -  she's Suzy! 

This really is a visually stimulating picturebook, it's bright colours and animated illustrations will motivate children to feel as Suzy feels - frustrated, excited, frightened and finally consoled.    And though I've not emphasized the words, there is much repetition, which supports and accompanies the beautiful illustrations.   It's perfect for pre-school, with follow up activities that could include thinking about different animals and which animals we'd like to imitate: Ummm ...  if I was a snake I could slither along the ground ... I'd be Sandie Snake!

Part 3 is Suzy Goose and the Christmas star ... coming shortly!

By the way, if you are interested in expressions like 'silly goose' related to goose / geese (and there are many!) check out this link.

Petr Horácek and pre-school books: part 1

Screen shot from Petr Horácek's website 

I'm going to talk about  Petr Horácek in all my December posts.  I've been using his books with my pre-school children since 2003.  He has a very characteristic style, using bright colours and bold shapes, which are perfect for the under 5's.  His vibrant backgrounds painted with visible brush work or spoldgy splashes of water-colour incorporate a technique we often see in early years classrooms, which is water colour paint over wax crayon.  His first books, mostly board books, do this very simply, but effectively.

In What is black and white? you can see his blackbird is outlined in blue wax crayon, a great contrast to the bright yellow background, but also evoking the blue hints one gets when something is really shiny and black (I have a black Labrador, who shines blue in the sun!) 

Here's his black cat, with the outline and features in wax crayon.  I love her nose and bottom in light pink!  
And what is white, can you guess? The children are good at guessing and usually get snow and milk, but not goose, a bird which appears regularly in his work. 

In Strawberries are red he uses different shades  of the same colour to create the outlines of the piles of fruit.  

Here are his blueberries, a dark blue against a light blue background. They really do look good enough to eat don't they?   In Portugal blueberries aren't found in the wild, so we think about other fruit which can be blue.  They have some very blue coloured plums and even very dark grapes have a blue tinge. 
In both these books you can see that the pages are different widths; they're cut into shapes, and get gradually narrower, culminating in the creation of a superimposed double spread. 

In What is black and white?, the black and white pages come together to create the zebra's stripes, and  in Strawberries are red all the fruits come together to make a bowl of fruit salad.  Children love this surprise, and they want the story again and again, so that they can see that magical ending, and only on retells do they actually notice the pages are getting narrower! 
In their simplicity these books actually provide children with lots to look and think about.  The creation of different hues of colour, the wax crayon and water colour technique and the montage effect. In one of my classes children made a black and white book of their own.  And many a class have had fun making fruit salad after seeing Strawberries are red, and they love talking about the fruit they put in it, describing the colours and saying if the fruit is sweet or sour. 
There's a whole collection of board books so check out Petr's website and have a look. 
And also take  a peek at his gallery.  His work as an artist is interesting.  
Part 2, my next post, is about his recurring goose.  

About being friends

Yo! Yes? is one of my most  favourite of picturebooks.  Its simplicity is deceiving, with one or two words on a page seen together with apparently hasty watercolour / charcoal illustrations - the combination of image / word is brilliant. It's a simple story - two boys meet, they talk and become friends.  But that very short summary ignores the visual impact of each page and double spread. Chris Raschka uses a large (I think) hand written font for each punctuated utterance, and it becomes as much part of the image as his vibrant depictions of the two boys, one black the other white.  

Don't miss the dedication and copyright page, which shows us how the two boys meet, walking past each other in the street. One solitary black boy waiting, arms crossed, but facing us.  Large trainers, laces undone. He's  happy, and ready to talk to anyone. The white boy is intent on walking away, anywhere as long as it's away, he's sad too, we can see his turned down mouth and his shoulders are haunched inwards. 

Chris Raschka has painted the background in light washes, starting with a greeny blue and moving through pinky red, orangey yellow and finally a glowing bright yellow, they represent the emotions on each page.  And each figure is outlined by this wash, as though in a spotlight, a spotlight for each boy - visually it both unites and separates them on the page - they are both boys, yet different. 

Moving into the book, our young black 'dude', (for he is definitely cool), stops this possible friend in mid-step, when we turn the page we see a large arresting 'Yo!' and Chris Raschka's figures ooze unspoken communication. The white boy's posture, with simple charcoaled eyes and mouth, together with the small size reply, 'Yes' and the accompanying '?'  convey the depths of uncertainty he is feeling.  

Each page and spread continue in this way, a visual dialogue between the two boys, where we read the words, the punctuation and their postures as one whole visual communicative act.  The two boys remain centered on their respective pages, their feet anchoring them to the spot, but their bodies leaning forwards or backwards; their arms out or folded in over their chests; their heads up or down.  

With each utterance and pose, we learn the problem.  The white boy has no friends.  His head drops, his shoulders droop.  

The black boy can't believe it. And so he offers his own friendship.  His chest is proudly stuck out towards the white boy, he points at the bull's eye like circle on his t-shirt.  The white boy's reaction confirms the doubt we already feel inside ... friends? 

And after some thought, with the background washes moving through pink to yellow, swaying left to right, the white boy gleefully decides that he will accept the offer of friendship. The big hand written word almost squashes him with its weight. 

And so we turn the page, and the boys are together, the white boy has crossed over to the other side of the double spread, walking to the left with his newfound friend. They are joyous, shaking hands and the white spotlight is on both of them, no longer separate, uniting the two boys. The bright yellow wash in the background emphases their happiness and the words, both beginning with 'y' unite them too... rolling off our tongue as we read them in our heads. 

But it's not the end, there's one final page, the boys are depicted on a single page. They are so happy, they are jumping up out of the top boarder, they are jumping up and over the word, 'Yow!'  They are no longer achored to the bottom of the page, but free to leap and loop.  Free to be friends, black or white. 

When you re-read this picturebook, your students will be ready with that 'Yow!', no matter how old they are.  It's an excellent introduction to cultural differences and friendships, and you can use this picturebook to  talk a little about that.  

The pictoral effect of the handwritten font is a great introduction to punctuation and voice inflection too.  Look at all the different ways we can say 'Yes': 

'Yes?', 'Yes!', 'Yes.'  

Play around with other words using the different punctuation they have discovered, and look at how punctuation is used in the book - help the children see how the punctuation matches Raschka's  drawings - there's emotion in both. 

Perhaps you could divide your class into two groups, each representing one of the boys. Chorus the rhythmic dialogue, each group saying their side of the conversation.  Then get your students to do short dramatizations, uniting voice inflection and movement.  

Older students might want ot write another story about friendship, carefully punctuated and maybe even illustrated or dramatised.  

If you want to see Chris Raschka talking about how he makes a book there's a fun film on youtube.  

Pigs might fly: thinking about roles

Continuing with picturebook titles that promote discussion and thought, this post is about Piggybook by Anthony Browne, the present  children's laureate. Anthony Browne is probably most famous for his picturebooks with gorilla characters, and when he was nominated children's laureate in 2009 the title of the Guardian article was: 'Gorilla artist Anthony Browne becomes children's laureate'.  His surrealist life-like illustrations, full of references to other texts, draw you into the pages, and on each re-read there's something new and different to be found.  His picturebooks work on so many levels that they provide pleasure and delight to children and adults alike.  Piggybook is no exception and despite being written in 1986, its message still holds true.  It's an excellent picturebook for all ages to pour over and discuss, including teens and adults.  

The front cover provides an excellent opportunity for predicting the story.  There's an illustration of a sad looking wowan, carrying a man and two boys on her back, who look happy, their cheeks pink and rosey. The woman is  standing against a wall with patterned wallpaper which first appear to be pink tulips, but on closer inspection reveal themsleves to be transforming, Escher-like, into pigs' heads.   There's a lightswitch on the wall, which also has a pig-like look to it.  The dusty blue title, 'Piggybook' is a good contrast to the pinky coloured background.  The visual play with piggyback and piggybook may not be picked up by our students, but we can tell them that the woman is giving the man and boys a piggyback and they are likely to make the connection.  The back cover gives some very precise information about who the people are on the front cover.  "Mr Piggott and his two sons behave like pigs to poor Mrs Piggott - until, finally, she walks out. Left to fend for themselves, the male Piggotts undergo some curious changes."   There are three illustrated cameos from the inside of the book showing a sink full of dirty washing up, an uncleared table and a pig's trooter holding a piece of paper which reads, 'You are pigs'. We can make a pretty good guess as to what we will find inside now... even the family name is pig-like.

There are no endpapers in my paperback version, but the title page is delicious.  It shows two flying pink pigs, flitting across the page.  They remind me first of those ceramic flying mallards of the 1930s, which grannies used to have on the wall above the mantlepiece.  There were always three and though we can only see two pigs there's definitely a resemblence.  And then I'm reminded of the idiom, "Pigs might fly", something we say when we think there is no chance at all of something happening, another example of Browne's visual humour.  Our students may or may not know this expression, but older students in particular would enjoying learning it.  Even if the reader never makes this connection, which is most likely to be the case, it doesn't lose its charm. 

The opening page is typical of Browne's deadpan narration alongside a very suggestive illustration, which we look at before we read the words.  

We see Mr Piggot, looking his best, larger than large, with his two sons, imitating his pose.  They are in front of their house.  It is only upon reading the words that our attention is drawn to what's missing from the illustration:. "Mr Piggott lived with his two sons, Simon and Patrick, in a nice house with a nice garden, and a nice car in a nice garage.  Inside the house was his wife."  The careful positioning of the unnamed wife, at the end of the decsription after the mention of the car, says it all. 

Browne illustrates Mr Piggott and his boys looking out at the reader and in full colour, they appear initially very confident, in charge and in control.  Mrs Piggott  however is depicted in sepia, we can't see her facial features and she looks small, haunched and timid.  
The early pages of this picturebook set the scene,  Mr Piggott and the boys larger than life, demanding food and attention, their mouths are always open, as though calling for something and Mrs Piggott is always in another picture, cooking, cleaning and looking after her family, never physically with them in an illustration. Gradually, as we turn the pages, we begin to notice references to pigs emerging from the illustrations, Mr Piggott's shadow is pig-like; he's eating fat pork sausages, a close up of his mouth and chest as he takes the sausage to his mouth.  This illustration has no words, it doesn't need any. The climax comes the next day, when they get home to an empty house, "... there was no-one to greet them."   The boys are shown walking into the living room, and if you look carefully they have pig emblems on their school blazers and Mr Piggott has a pig like rose in his lapel - there are other pig references too.   

We turn to an illustration of the living room fireplace.  The wall paper is now definitely pigs not tulips, the tiles have blue pigs on them, the grating has pig-like decorations, the poker has a pig handle, there's a pig vase, a pig card, a pig pencil top and the imitation of Gainsborough's 'Mr & Mrs Andrews' shows a man with a pig's head standing next to what was his wife, but it has been cut out and removed.    
The facing page has the following text: "She was nowhere to be found. On the mantlepiece was an envelope.  Mr Piggott opened it. Inside was a piece of paper."  Under is the illustration of a pigs' trotter holding a letter, with the words "You are pigs."
And of course they are, Mr Piggott and his sons are now pigs in clothes and they try to look after themsleves by cooking  their own meals, which always tasted horrible. Everything's a mess, dirty dishes in piles, clothes stained and in need of a wash.  And there are constant references to the pigs in all these illustrations.

Even the dog has pig-like features, as does the telephone and the lampshade, and can you see the shadow in the window?  That's all we need in a story about pigs!  A wonderful intertextual reference to a wolf, which we automatically associate with three pigs from our exposure to the traditional story.   Many of the students in our classes will be familiar with this story and will make the connection as well.  

Finally we are told, "One night there was nothing in the house for them to cook. 'We'll just have to root around and find some scraps,' snorted Mr Piggott."  Notice the wonderful use of piggy-like words in these sentences.  And Mrs Piggott returns, Browne gives us a fabulous illustration, showing us the perfect ending, the pigs at Mrs Piggott's feet.  And the words on the facing page say, "'P-L-E-A-S-E come back,' they snuffled."  They could do nothing but snuffle, for they were pigs! 

But this isn't the end.  The following pages show the male Piggotts washing up, making beds and ironing, they even help with the cooking and finally we are shown Mrs Piggott, full frontal, she's smiling, a long fringe almost hiding her eyes, there's a smudge on her cheek ... and when we turn the page, we see her mending the nice family car, (look at the number plate!). 

Visually Browne really gives us lots to look for and at.  We don't see all of the visual clues the first, even the second time round.  It's a book which demands that we return to and browse through, taking our time with the illustrations and discovering the hidden messages Browne leaves us.  But the main message isn't hidden at all.  It's very clearly given and discussion around the male / female roles in the home can be both frightening and enriching.  These are important discussions and execellent opportunities for teens and young adults as well as older primary children to use English and think critically about what they see in the picturebook and in their own lives. 

Recently two English teachers working in the third cycle of Portuguese education attended a workshop I was running and they decided to design a whole sequence of activities around the book.  These activities involved not only English but other subjects too.  The students were encouarged to discuss male / female roles in Portuguese society today and in the past (history), look at women in other cultures (geography / social studies) and design a questionnaire in Portuguese to use at home and then analyze the results (maths).  It became a term long project and they were very excited about it. 

In Anthony Browne's speech accepting the children's laureate award he said: "Picture books are for everybody at any age, not books to be left behind as we grow older. The best ones leave a tantalising gap between the pictures and the words, a gap that is filled by the reader's imagination, adding so much to the excitement of reading a book". Piggybook is an excellent example of one of 'the best' ones.