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Rules Of Summer by Shaun Tan Analysis
On the surface, Shaun Tan’s award-winning picture book Rules Of Summer is simply a list of rules. Below I take a look at how Rules Of Summer is in fact a complete narrative.
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Nannies In Childen’s Literature
What is the difference between nannies and nurses? How do you pick the nanny in the illustrations of books for children? It’s easy for English stories. There was a dress code. According to Life Below Stairs: True Lives of Edwardian Servants by Alison Maloney, Edwardian nannies dressed like this: In the nursery, the nanny wore a…
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The Female Injures Male Trope In Children’s Stories
Female on male violence is often used for comedic effect in storytelling. This holds true even when male on female violence would never fly. Is this a double standard?
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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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Islands and Symbolism in Literature
We see islands in the oldest literature we know, from Shakespeare’s The Tempest (Prospero’s Island) to Homer’s The Odyssey (Circe’s Island) to Jason and the Golden Fleece (Lemnos, Doilones, Cius etc). A well-known island from Greek mythology is Ogygia, considered ‘navel of the sea’. This island is mentioned in Homer’s Odyssey as the home of the nymph…
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Comparative Children’s Literature: Finland
Trends in Finnish children’s literature mirror trends in the English speaking world, but Finland is possibly more keen to keep its unique culture alive via children’s books. The Moomin stories are some of the weirdest and most inventive children’s books out there, and much beloved, especially in the Moomin family’s native Finland, where there is…
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Babysitter’s Club Novel Study
It would be easy to dismiss The Babysitter’s Club as an outdated storyline aimed at channeling girls into careers in childcare, turning them into good little obedient baby-machines and not much else. However, never judge a book by its title, right? (Because a lot of the time authors don’t choose their own titles anyhow.) And…
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How To Write Powerful Metaphor
The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge attended lectures on chemistry to expand his ‘stock of metaphors’. Quite Interesting Around 1 in 8 words (i.e., 12,6% of all words) across different genres is used metaphorically. Steen, G. J., Dorst, A. G., Herrmann, J. B., Kaal, A. A., Krennmayr, T., & Pasma, T. (2010). A method for linguistic metaphor identification: From MIP to MIPVU. Amsterdam: John…
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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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Olivia and the Fairy Princesses by Ian Falconer Analysis
Olivia and the Fairy Princesses is the third Olivia book I’m taking a close look at; the first was Olivia, which I really liked; the next was Olivia and the Missing Toy which I really didn’t and now for a story which has garnered Olivia a bit of a reputation among reviewers on social media…
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Anton Can Do Magic by Ole Könnecke Analysis
Anton Can Do Magic by Ole Könnecke is a great book for parents who would like to teach their kids The Magic of Reality (as expressed by Richard Dawkins and others). Written and illustrated by a German picturebook maker, this was translated by New Zealand’s Gecko Press. Anton Can Do Magic is part of a…
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Stuck by Oliver Jeffers (2011) Analysis
When Floyd’s kite gets stuck in a tree, he tries to knock it down with increasingly larger and more outrageous things. A perfect picture book by Oliver Jeffers. STORY STRUCTURE OF STUCK There’s a long oral tradition of stories which get cumulatively more and more ridiculous until the most ridiculous idea ends the story. “The…
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Black Dog by Pamela Allen Analysis
Black Dog by Pamela Allen (1991) is about a girl who actually neglects her dog, but learns not to by the end. A few weeks ago I took a close look at the much more recent picture book with a similar name, Blackdog by Levi Pinfold. In that, I interpret the black dog as agoraphobia…
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The Technique of Ticking Clocks in Storytelling
Once you notice ticking clocks in storytelling you see them in everything, so beware.
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Loveykins by Quentin Blake Picture Book Analysis
The ideology behind Loveykins: Wild creatures, while sometimes requiring some human nurturing if abandoned by their mother as babies, must eventually be returned to the wild. There is also a message against ‘over-mothering’ in this story. Let wild creatures be wild creatures is a close cousin to ‘let kids be kids’. Another picture book with…