Picture Book Club REPLAY

The Skull by Jon Klassen

Hello to you all! I am very happy to be posting the replay for Picture Book Club for this month. We were discussing The Skull: A Tyrolean Folktale by Jon Klassen. As ever, I really enjoyed delving deeper into the book, and I feel like I got loads out of it that I can bring into my written and illustrated work, which is great! I hope you get similar inspiration from it!

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Here are a few things to think about yourself before you watch, to help you bring your own thoughts to the replay:

I don’t know if you saw all the chat earlier this month about what the industry/parents/carers want children’s books to be vs what children actually want to read when this article came out? (I barely use Twitter, but it seems the easiest way to see quite a few different voices talking about the article) If you have time, I suggest having a read of the article before we meet for Picture Book Club.

And here are some questions you could think about ahead of time:

• What do you think makes a good Children’s Book?

• What do you think about books that seem to be made more for the parent or grandparent? Is there a place for these too?

• What do you think about “coffee table” books for children?

• Is there enough of a space in the children’s book market for what Ursula Le Guin called “children’s capacity for darkness”? What are your favourites?

• How does Klassen set up the story?

• Look at the pace of the story, how does Klassen tell the beginning/middle/end

• What are the themes of the book?

• Who do you think is the intended audience?  Why?

• How does Klassen use words and pictures together?

• Do the images and text match?

• How effective is the use of page turns in the book?

• Look at the balance of page/double page spreads. How does Klassen use this to enhance the storytelling?

• How does Klassen use metaphors and symbolism? How effective are they?

• How effectively is colour used in the book?

• Take a look at the composition. How does Klassen use this to enhance the story?

• How "realistic" are the illustrations?

• What does Otilla want at the beginning? Does she get what she wants? 

• What do the other characters want? How is this shown with words and pictures?

• How does Klassen show how Otilla is feeling?

• What is the perspective of the book? Are the images close up/far away? Do we look through other creature's/character's eyes?

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