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Pixar vs. DreamWorks
Compared to many people I am no great fan of Pixar, partly because of their continued use of The Female Maturity Principle of Storytelling, partly because I think their films a bit more hit and miss than many critics will admit. But I will say this about Pixar: in comparison to Dreamworks they’re awesome. IMDb has […]
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Leaf by Stephen Michael King Picture Book Analysis
Leaf by Australian storyteller Stephen Michael King is a wordless book comprising pictures and onomatopoeia. How does one write flap copy for a (largely) wordless picture book? The publishers of leaf have obviously done a test read with a young reader called Amelia and they quoted her response for the flap. This story reminds me […]
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Gender Inversion As Gags In Children’s Stories
There’s this gag in many humorous children’s stories which almost everyone else finds hilarious and I find really troublesome. It’s when a male character dresses as a female character. This gender inversion in itself is meant to be funny. But why?
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This Book Just Ate My Dog by Richard Byrne (2014) Analysis
This Book Just Ate My Dog is a great example of both. Part way through the story the reader is yanked out of it, reminded in no uncertain terms that this thing they’re holding… yeah, it’s a book. It’s a physical object. **SPOILER ALERT** The dog disappears into the gutter. I have seen little kids find […]
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Jack and the Baked Beanstalk by Colin Stimpson (2012) Analysis
As you can see from the cover art, this picture book has been illustrated by someone with a lot of experience in digital art — as a coffee table book of illustrations this stands alone as an exhibition of beautiful colour, wonderfully composed perspective drawings and interesting character design. The O.G. Jack And The Beanstalk […]
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Which Witch’s Wand Works by Poly Bernatene Analysis
Which Witch’s Wand Works? is a 2004 carnivalesque picture book in which two sister witches are the stand-ins for children. Alliteration features strongly in this story — not only do we have the title of the book (and of the fictional TV show they argue over), but also the names of the main characters, Rattle, […]
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Tomboys vs Girly-girls In Middle Grade Novels
Laura and Mary Ingalls Georg(ina) and Anne Ramona and Beezus/Susan Kushner Bean and Ivy Clementine and Margaret Junie B. and Tattletale May/Richie Lucille Each of these pairs represents a perceived dichotomy of girlhood: the girly girl versus the “tomboy”. While I use the word “tomboy”, the speech marks indicate my disdain for the very concept. A girl who likes rough-and-tumble and […]
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The Velveteen Rabbit by Marjery Williams
The Velveteen Rabbit is a picturebook by Margery Williams from the first Golden Age of Children’s Literature. First published in 1922, The Velveteen Rabbit has been re-illustrated many times since. You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have […]
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Hop O’ My Thumb by Charles Perrault
Hop O’ My Thumb is so similar to Hansel and Gretel you might wonder how both co-existed. Both stories have: A time of famine In which the parents decide to leave their children in the woods A trail of pebbles A second abandonment, further into the woods A welcoming cottage in the woods A cannibalistic […]
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Purple Adjectives, Plain Adjectives; Every adjective has a home
ON PURPLE PROSE Apart from the fact that certain types of writing demand flowery language — a subset of the romance genre being a case in point — there are other uses for the sort of prose which otherwise reads so beautifully that it draws attention to itself. Sometimes such language has the unintended effect […]
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The Day Patch Stood Guard by Elizabeth Laird and Colin Reeder (1990) Analysis
The Day Patch Stood Guard is a New Zealand farming picture book from the 1980s which is, at its heart, a man and his dog story. Notice anything a bit different about the cover of The Day Patch Stood Guard? The usual convention is to credit the writer first and the illustrator second. Here the […]
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Duck Cakes For Sale by Janet Lunn and Kim LaFave Analysis
STORY STRUCTURE OF DUCK CAKES FOR SALE Duck Cakes For Sale from 1989 is an example of the circular story, in which the picture book ends, but we suspect exactly the same thing is going to happen again, because the main character hasn’t had a anagnorisis. Like a Chekhovian short story, picture books often elicit the […]
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Fathers In Children’s Literature
Across children’s literature, young readers see less of mothers than they do in real life, and, as a type of wish fulfilment, many see more interaction with fictional fathers.
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TV Study: Stranger Things (2016)
Stranger Things is a Netflix series created by the brilliantly named ‘Duffer Brothers’, out this year but set in 1983. Though I suspect strong ‘recency bias’, season one scores a very high 9.2 on IMDb. **CONTAINS ALL THE SPOILERS** The show feels like a mixture of Twin Peaks (with the missing kids and small community), Freaks […]
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Pyrrhic Victories and Tragic Dilemmas In Fiction
In the ultimate pyrrhic victory, the main character has achieved what needs doing but is dead by the end of the story.