This week I was very pleased to discover and read the
children’s book Tough Boris by Mem Fox. What really impressed me about this book
was the bulk of the story was told through the illustrations, while the written
words gave only very simple statements about the main character on each page.
This narrative technique of using the images to do the majority of the story
telling was discussed in week 5 of the course and really stood out to me.
This story is constructed in such a way that it almost feels
like you are reading two versions of the book at the same time. The written
text is very simple and seems aimed at very young readers where it follows a
pattern of repetition when describing Tough Boris.
‘He was massive, all pirates are massive. He was greedy, all pirates are greedy’.
Kathryn Brown's illustrations on the other hand must be studied for some
time to get a fuller understanding of the characters and their motivations and
feelings. The illustrations use suggestive methods to get you wondering about
what is happening, and you eventually discover a much deeper narrative with
denser character development. The images tell the story of a cabin boy who was
taken from his home against his will, and the cruel Pirate captain has a change
of heart when his parrot dies, and decides to return the boy to his home and
let him go free. There is further complication when the boy is depicted as being
very sad to go home after growing fond of his life at sea.
I found it quite enlightening to discover a book with so
much meaning depicted in the images, and I feel this book could be used with
middle years students to get them analysing a text outside of comprehension
of written words.
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