Zoo

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It's a wonderful critique of zoos and of the way that people treat animals, the way they treat each other, the way they ignore each other and the way that society is as much a zoo (cages and all) as a zoo really is. It also happens to be full of beautiful art juxtaposed with a surreal comic art... brining that dystopia straight to the eyes.

On 9 June 2009 he was appointed the sixth Children's Laureate (2009–2011), selected by a panel that former Poet Laureate Andrew Motion chaired. [5] Look at the picture of the giraffes. Can you see how they are camouflaged against the wall of the giraffe house. Can you think of other animals that use camouflage? Something I do admire is it's comment on consumerism. It's décor resembling a bar-code and it being a commercial item. I think that that is one thing that it truly embodies and imbibes throughout. Share Voices in the Park. What do the pictures tell us about the way each character thinks and feels? Encourage children to look closely and ask lots of questions.Make a ‘thought collection’ of transformable objects. Create before and after pictures to show the transformations in action: a table could turn into a horse, for example, or a saucepan could become a fancy hat. Hateley, Erica. (2009). Magritte and Cultural Capital: The Surreal World of Anthony Browne. The Lion and the Unicorn, 33(3), 324–348. It would be good for guided reading from around years 3+ as it is interesting and has a good mix of words.

The story doesn’t just concentrate on the animals in the zoo; it also talks about the family and has a few jokes, which gives it a different feel to your usual children’s story. The family on first appearance seem like a classic family, with the archetypes firmly in place. However this is a contemporary family, the characters are easily recognizable with people we could know, which give it a warm familiar quality. The protagonist himself is a character that is easily identifiable to primary school children and shows a realistic quality through the fact that children do misbehave! Altmann, Anna E. (1994). Parody and Poesis in Feminist Fairy Tales. Canadian Children’s Literature, 73, 22–31. Douglas, Susan J. and Michaels, Meredith W. (2004). The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined All Women. New York: Free Press. Wake Up, World! A Day in the Life of Children Around the World by Beatrice Hollyer (Oxfam/Frances Lincoln, 1999) Hately, Erica. (2011). Gender. In Philip Nel and Lissa Paul (Eds.), Keywords for Children’s Literature (pp. 86–92). New York: New York University Press.Thinking globally: The challenges of global education” in Teaching Thinking & Creativity, Volume 8:2, Issue 23 (2007) So who is the Minotaur of this zoo-labyrinth? Is it the father? I believe it’s the father AND the gorilla, who is an absolutely pitiful creature. We don’t even see the gorilla’s face, just the hunched over, completely withdrawn, pathetic figure of a magnificent wild creature with beautiful reddish fur. Eccleshare, Julia (28 July 2000). "Portrait of the artist as a gorilla. Interview: Anthony Browne". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 7 January 2008 . Retrieved 26 December 2007. The Visitors Who Came to Stay by Annalena McAfee (Hamilton, 1984) – winner of the 1985 German youth literature prize for picture books in its German-language translation retaining Browne's illustrations Another way to explore surrealist ideas is by playing the Shape Game. Browne uses this technique when he wants to generate ideas. Draw an outline, then invite someone to transform the shape into an object. This game is explored in The Shape Game, in which the family from Zoo visit an art gallery. Become art investigators

In assessing gender stereotyping in secondary characters, we must be aware of the narrative perspective of the text. In [Astrid Lindgren’s] Karlson on the Roof, the mother can be very easily perceived as a stereotype, since she is only portrayed in stereotypical situations: baking cinnamon rolls and making hot chocolate drinks for her son, bandaging his wound after a fight, comforting and caring. However, the narrative is focalized through the young protagonist, and the portrait of the mother is his image of a perfect parent….Indeed, we do not know what else Midge’s mother does beside [sic] baking rolls, since it is irrelevant for the focalizing character. (Nikolajeva, 2002, p. 115) Although Zoo depicts a mother who cares for her children—she is, for example, more attentive than their father to the fact that they are hungry—her mind is also suggested to be on other things. In the course of the story, the first-person narrator seems to be oblivious to his mother’s perspective on the zoo. The illustrations never show him looking at her, and his expression is often in contrast with hers. The text confirms that the I-narrator is mostly caught up in fights with his brother, food, and gifts, and finds the animals boring rather than pathetic. At the end of the book, however, he dreams about being caged like an animal and wonders if animals can dream too. The mother’s empathy with the animals has affected and influenced him, after all, and he is able to look beyond his own needs and interests, speculating with empathy about how other beings might feel.

Behave like an illustrator

Think about the income and expenses that a zoo might have? Where do they get their money from? What do they have to spent it on? Zoo” by Anthony Browne by is really a sad picture book about going to the zoo with your family. A boy is telling the story through his perspective by reading the text but I think if you were to look at the pictures, you can see many different perspectives taken place in the book. It starts of with a each member of the family has their own portrait; similar to “Willy’s Pictures”. By looking at their facial expressions you can feel through personality coming through the pictures. The first one I noticed was the dad with a stern look on his face. Then the boy, who is the narrator, is in a calm manner while his brother is smiling a fake smile and his mother looking really sad. It’s a story about how a family goes to the zoo and when the boy who goes to sleep at night remembers a dream that he was behind bars, trapped, maybe living a life he didn’t want to. He pondered if animals could have dreams like him. The character made a connection to the animals because he feels the same way as the animals. The final sentence in the book asks a question. Could you think about the answer? Could you write a story about a dream that an animal might have? Draw some of the animals shown in the illustrations. Use photos to help you? (see Resources below).

Zoo by Anthony Browne is a story about a family’s trip to the zoo with an underlying theme that becomes evident throughout the story as it progresses. Tony Bradman, "Through the magic mirror: the work of Anthony Browne", British Book News, 1984 Autumn [Children's Books], pp.2–5.Illustrators look closely at everything around them and pay attention to colours, textures, shapes and details. They think imaginatively and ask lots of questions. What if… that wheel turned into an apple? What if… the people visiting the zoo were like animals? What if… the trees were hiding a wolf? A pumpkin? An axe? Get sketching