Monday, 6 February 2017

Book Review: Chimidyue - A Folktale of the Amazon Rainforest



Reflections
• I immediately love the vivid colours, simple shapes and forms and use of light and dark to show
whether Chimidyue is in the rainforest or outside it. A simple but effective visual device!
• The book has a hand-made, crafted, papercut aesthetic though it has been illustrated digitally.
• The line patterns give the illustrations a certain charm and texture - almost alluding to hand-sewn
felt elements again showing craft and a feeling of family, something made and handed down just like this folktale story itself.
• Repeated motifs of butterflies, flowers, leaves, trees and branches on each page encompasses a sense of continuity,
flow and togetherness of the book as a whole.
• Each page is a surprise with its viewpoints and composition. Makes turning the page fun!
• Each page spread has been used to it's full potential, but without feeling cluttered.
• The text is either placed above or below the illustrations to make it easy to read and so as not to interrupt the visual storytelling.
• The chosen font is large, rounded and bold for readability.
• Pronunciations (Chim-ID-yoo-a) as well as other terms relevant to the story are explained at the back giving an educational angle.
• This is a charming story with a cultural aspect that is entertaining and interesting; important in today's political landscape. Our differences should be accepted, embraced and celebrated and I'm glad that an obscure fairytale from a different country is featured in a children's book to help children learn about other traditions and folklore as well as their own.

How is this relevant to my work?
I have started to play more with simple shapes and colours in my own practice as seen in my Visual Skills, Visual Narratives and Visual Language work. I have really experimented with and adopted this mode of image making as it is something I respond positively to and enjoy the aesthetics of. Simplify to amplify! Having just completed my own picture book, titled The Pearly Kings and Queens, and learning more about composition in Visual Language, I now look at children's books in a different way - is the composition and framing interesting? Is it fun to turn each page and expect something different? Is there a sense of depth and viewpoint? I can start to pick these apart and use them in my practice.

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