Voices in the Park

Product Information

The father searches the classifieds looking for a job, which will allow him to provide for his family. But because economic power is so connected to being a man, the fact that he has no hope of conforming to society’s expectation of ‘Man’, this exclusion has ostensibly afforded him a different kind of freedom. He can sit in a park during the daytime and spend time with his daughter. This voice is of the sad father. He is walking to the park with his daughter and dog. You are going to ask the same two questions as before with the same discussion as with the first voice. “Who is talking in this story?” and “Who’s voice is missing?”

What are more interesting to note is the implications of the division of class in these illustrations. In the illustrations for the first voice, there is one frame where it shows Smudge's father in worn clothes, reading a newspaper while sitting on a park bench. Behind him is a dog waste disposal and garbage littered on the ground. Then, there is a lamppost that divides the frame between him and Charles’ mother. She is standing there, dressed in more expensive and fancier clothes with all of her jewelry on. Notice behind her, there is no garbage at all. The grass all around her is nice and clean. This illustration shows the social class divide, comparing the surroundings of someone that is of lower class and upper-class drawn together in a public park. That lamppost serves as a device to show a comparison between the two next to each other. The line of the lamppost works again in showing the divide between the perceptions of the world from the point of view of Charles and Smudge in an illustration placed in the third voice. By placing the line between characters resemble some type of separations in this book whether it is in relation to relationships or social class status. Anthony Browne is a highly acclaimed and multi award winning author and illustrator whose books are known and enjoyed for their surreal illustrations and thought-provoking themes. The text itself reads as four separate stories, each with its own voice. At the end he blends the voices to create one semi- ambiguous ending, letting the reader fill in the holes. The art does the same thing, relying on the reader to come up with the actual relevance . To start your critical literacy session with the kiddos, I suggest that you read the book and have the discussions anytime but bedtime. We read them during our calm down time of the day which is after lunch. Sit down in a cozy spot and pull out the book. Read the title of the book and ask your child this question: Re the story, I think the different perspectives of the characters could lead to some interesting discussions and introspective mulling. But I thought some of the choices were a bit odd if the audience here is young children, such as the despondent man looking at the job ads despite feeling hopeless.

Curriculum

The children are most likely to say we are missing the little boy’s voice. They may also say the dog. You can ask the kids what you think those voices would say. Read The Second Voice Impressionism. 23 July 2010. Wikipedia. 17 Aug. 2010 < http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/​impressionism>. Could you create your own story in which different people have different points of view about the same event? This is a Literature unit based on the excellent text Voices in the Park by Anthony Browne. I love this book for teaching perspective, point-of-view and just the importance of friendship.

dramatise the text and present the story as a mini play in four parts – present this to other classes; What is the reason for a parallactic plot structure? In literary parallax, the message is implicitly this: The truth does not exist. A person’s version of the truth depends on their perspective. This is a defining characteristic of the literary Impressionists. That said, I think Anthony Browne has used parallax to a different end in this instance. I believe he conveys an unambiguous message: Repression of children is bad; playing is good; friendship across socioeconomic boundaries is good. He uses parallax to avoid hitting readers over the head with this ‘message’. A strong message like that could easily seem didactic. When readers put pieces of a puzzle together for themselves, they are more likely to agree with the storyteller’s message, regarding it as self-evident. write letters to an agony aunt or hold an ‘advice surgery’ for each character to discuss their problems;Notice the ‘a’ in the circle etched into the wall behind him: A symbol for anarchy since the 1970s. Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is sceptical of authority and rejects all involuntary, coercive forms of hierarchy. In this sense, Voices In The Park has an anarchist message. Anarchism also calls for the abolition of the state, which it holds to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful. The larger units of work are "Voices in the Park", "Gorilla", "Silly Billy" and "Zoo", which all contain literature circle task cards, linked Creative Arts activities, step-by-step shared reading guides and much more. I use surrealism a lot is because I was very affected by surrealist paintings when I was young. I also believe children see through surrealist eyes: they are seeing the world for the first time. When they see an everyday object for the first time, it can be exciting and mysterious and new. Anthony Browne from from the Teaching Books interview Surreal‘ in everyday English means ‘I didn’t understand it’. But in relation to works of art, surreal means literally ‘over and above’, ‘more’. The word refers to art which makes use of paradoxes, riddles and allusions. Something in the work is ‘superimposed’ over the naïve reading. ‘Surreal’ means the viewer must contribute to derive meaning.