We didn't have a chance to hear from everyone after our small group discussion of "Voices..." so I thought we could continue the discussion here on the blog.
- What did you discover about the book as you focused your reading with particular roles?
- What did people notice in the book that was new, interesting, or provocative?
- What questions does the book raise for you?
5 comments:
I did a textual response of Voices in the Park and I focused on how the characterization and illustrations represented a divide between the middle class and the lower class. Charles and his mother seemed to be from the middle class because of where they lived, the way they dressed, they way they spoke, etc. and Smudge and her dad seemed to be from the lower class because they didn't live in as nice of an area, wore dirty clothes, etc. A couple of pictures showed the characters from the different social classes physically divided by a lamppost going right through the middle of the illustration. I thought the theme of the book was to be accepting of other people, because Charles' mother does not accept those who do not seem as well off as she is and she is not happy, but Charles does accept those who are not as fortunate as he is and he is very happy while spending time with them. I thought that Browne may have used gorillas as characters so that he would not be associating any races with social classes, and when I found out that he originally wrote the book using humans instead of gorillas it made me wonder even more why he chose to change the characters to gorillas.
I am wondering what other people thought Browne's reason was for using gorillas instead of humans or if any one read anything about Browne that said what made him decide to re-write the book with new illustrations?
I did the Intertextual response for "Voices in the Park." I read a biography on Anthony Browne and what he had to say about writing this particular book. Gorillas feature in a lot of his books and he said, "I am fascinated by them and the contrast they represent - their huge strength and gentleness. They're thought of as being very fierce creatures and they're not." I felt that in this story, even though the characters were gorillas, I didn't notice that they were gorillas all that much. I thought of them as humans. I guess I never really thought about why they were gorillas, but while reading about Anthony Browne, I have noticed his common theme of putting gorillas in his stories. The original book he wrote, "A Walk in the Park", included humans as the characters instead of gorillas. Then he wanted his new book, "Voices in the Park" to be split up into 4 parts with 4 voices. In his excerpt on "Voices in the Park", he thought hard about his human characters and thought something was wrong about it; it wasn't perfected. He said, "One day I found myself painting over one of the faces, and it turned into a gorilla. I had a mixture of feelings-I didn’t want to do another gorilla book, it didn’t seem necessary or relevant to the story to make them gorillas. But it worked. I changed the other characters and it worked for them, too. In a peculiar kind of way it made them more real, more human." So I think that is one of the answers as to why he used gorillas, but I bet there is more to his obsession with gorillas.
But I really like your idea that he might have used them to avoid the racial tension and tension having to do with social class.
I had the critical response for Voices in the Park. I really was interested in the book because of the way Anthony Browne had each character’s perspective separately. I believe that Browne connected each one to explain the intersection between class and gender. He displayed this throughout the book using his text and illustrations. The mother and Charles were upper class living in beautiful house. Browne showed this on the first page with the big white house in a nice neighborhood looking very clean. Compared to when he draws the father’s and Smudge’s home life. He does not draw their house but does show the neighborhood they live in garbage on the ground, very dirty looking and even a homeless man begging for money. The two families live two completely different lifestyles. The mother’s language is even different “It was time to take Victoria, our pedigree Labrador, and Charles, out son, for a walk.” Where the father just states, “I needed to get out of the house, so me and Smudge took the dog to the park.” The text alone shows the class difference. One thing I noticed that was very interesting is the drawing where the father is sitting on the bench looking at the newspaper where the mother is standing “looking down at the father” as she is better. There is this pole that separates them in the page his side has garbage on the ground around him and is sort of darker where her side is completely clean. This picture clearly showed me how he displayed the class difference through his illustrations. I believe when he describes the children gender matters but class does not. Both of the children did not judge each other in the way they dressed or how they spoke but Charles did judge Smudge at first for being a girl. However, once he gave her the chance he realized that she was actually very nice and fun. I really liked this book overall I believe that is demonstrates how money does not bring happiness but you can still be happy without money and how gender does make a difference when you have power/money.
This was an amazing book! However I do feel that this book is not something that is for children to read. Only because this book shows you how class and gender plays an important role in life. This book also used a lot of images which expressed the mood/ tone of each character. I really enjoyed this book and to be honest I am starting to read children's books a lot more.
I did the textual response for Voices in the Park and I found a lot of interesting content when I looked at just the font and the grammar of the text. If you notice the differences in the font, Charlie's father and Smudge's father both have large text, perhaps indicating that they are older, wiser, and have stronger opinions. The font used for Charlie's voice is small and frail, further indicating his timid nature. Then Smudge's voice is seen with messy, child-like font, which is a reflection of her playful personality. Looking at the grammar is another way one can see the class difference in the characters. Smudge and her father both have usage and mechanical errors in their text, while Charlie and his mother use mostly proper grammar.
Overall I really enjoyed this book and feel like it could be studied a lot further than what I was able to do. The illustrations alone show amazing differences in the points of view for each character. On thing I noticed, was the tree on fire in Charlie's mother's voice. What do people think about this fire?
Post a Comment