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Film Study: Finding Nemo Is Trans
Sure, I’ve never been the target audience for Finding Nemo. I was already an adult when the film came out in 2003. But even my own offspring didn’t enjoy it. Could Finding Nemo be the most boring and unimaginative of all the Disney Pixar feature-length animations? I won’t do a complete film study, because for […]
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Catching Fish In Art And Illustration
Illustrations of people out fishing. But sometimes you get what you don’t expect.
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Fish Bowls In Art
The fishbowl is a common symbol of surveillance, as is a glass house. For house cats, the fish bowl is a miniature version of the pond or lake — domestic version.
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Tad by Benji Davies
Tad (2019) is a picture book written and illustrated by Benji Davies. This is an especially good mentor text for illustrators because I’ve never seen a better example of a fairly muted colour scheme that suddenly pops after the page turn at the end. I literally said, “Wow!”
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The Nightfish by Helen McCosker Analysis
The Nightfish is an Australian picture book written and illustrated by Helen McCosker. Published in 2006, this children’s story makes a good counterpoint to There’s A Sea In My Bedroom (1984).
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President Squid by Aaron Reynolds and Sara Varon Analysis
The most hilarious thing about President Squid is that it is not about President Trump. Well, of course it’s about Trump and all of his kind, but as the author told Betsy Bird in an interview, it was already written and in the publishing pipeline before Trump even began his campaign. Reynolds wrote it around […]
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The Wer-Trout by Annie Proulx Short Story Analysis
Do you like the idea of river fishing, without the annoying realities? One option is an afternoon plumped in front of Deliverance, starring the late Burt Reynolds. Another option is Annie Proulx’s short story “The Wer-trout”
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A Fish Out Of Water by Helen Palmer Analysis
The story of Helen Palmer is — from the outside, certainly — a sad one. Helen is ‘the woman behind the man’ in the Dr Seuss duo. It was Helen who encouraged her husband Theo to start writing picture books. When the marriage ended and Theo embarked upon a second relationship, Helen suicided. It would […]
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This Is Not My Hat by Jon Klassen Analysis
This Is Not My Hat by Jon Klassen shows that toddlers can cope with the horror genre. “Jon Klassen’s darkly humorous illustrations are a joy to behold. Deceptively simplistic, the expressions and events that he captures, which range from the sublime to the sinister, are utterly wonderful.” The CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Medal judges’ […]