Today we started by showing the students some picture books that used simple drawings and different methods of drawings. We looked at Eric Carle’s “Today is Monday”, and how he’d only put one character on most pages, big and bold, and “Mister Seahorse”, where there are two characters on most pages, using simple shapes. We looked at Spot with his simple shape, and the use of pop-ups to reveal more information that’s not in the text. I showed them “Naughty Teddy”, which just used photographs of a teddy doing different naughty things, and we talked about what might work for their characters. Tracye insists that it’s quite simple to draw simple characters, but she is a bit of an illustrator, so I thought it would be a good idea for me to try and draw something on the whiteboard under her supervision. Her examples looked fairly daunting to most of us, even she she scaffolded it (Tracye dictating again). My first chipmunk had a very odd shaped head, but after I’d fixed that it was awesome (Tracye dictating again) – photo to follow. I’m thinking of illustrating my own book now, but it’ll only have one picture and it’ll be called “The Lone Chipmunk”. The kids thought it was terribly funny, I was almost offended.
After we’d really pushed the point about simple text and illustrations some brave students decided they needed to start again, and it was a good idea. One student felt that her text wasn’t what she wanted, and was too complicated – she had some really good parts but she just wasn’t happy with the whole thing and it had become daunting to try and make the whole thing work. I was really pleased that she had made this decision, because she hadn’t looked happy for any of the sessions. Within ten minutes we had the makings of a workable simple story and she was much happier. Another student wasn’t happy with the middle of his, he said it didn’t make sense. By changing it from past to present tense we made it more exciting and direct. I was really happy with the result of doing that and so was he. He’d wanted more “fire” in it, I think he got it.
Our next step is to have the text in the correct position for their roughs, and for them to know what medium they’ll use for their illustrations. We think we might make it yet by the deadline. Hopefully. Perhaps.
Diana Neild and Tracye Katon
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