Shh! We Have a Plan

Product Information

One of the best things about making your own bird feeder is that you’re inviting birds to visit regularly. The three older characters being different to the youngest is firstly recognised on the front cover. i didn't think something could top LITTLE OWL LOST for sheer cuteness and cleverness, but Haughton has done it. But, at the turn of the page, we find a ridiculous bunch of very tangled characters and a blissfully oblivious bird, flying away.

This indicates that he is not in on the plan, he does not share the same views or values as the other three. The ending was appropriately silly, with the littlest one shrugging as if to say, "Here we go again. I was able to use the hook line for a behaviour management tool, the setting to develop a whole class soundscape and the bulk of the book for ethical comprehension investigation. I like the quirky design and somehow it works very well, perhaps because the story is funny and easy to follow. I enjoyed checking out the mostly blue-shaded digital illustrations while they took over reading the dialogue.All the colours leap to life, something that was beautiful and new and full of wonder - or frightening, or disturbing - it's all there. Using movement and the repetition to build the suspense, swiftly followed by disappointment, will make it exciting and amusing for their audience. We had so many great lines we had to work on editing it down and in fact I think there is enough material for another picture book in there if we are lucky.

The two year-old on my lap last weekend enjoyed it every bit as much as I did, and we were both excited to "Read it again! In fact it made perfect sense to create a mainly silhouette image from paper cut and in fact the design of the birds also benefitted from it too. The book has a simple repetitive text which children will quickly access for themselves as they enjoy the pictures, peopled with Chris Haughton’s characteristic and comical angular and wide-eyed figures. Easy to predict that this book will also earn many prizes, but most importantly, children will love it!How many of us have pictures in our heads that have traveled along with us throughout our lives, and then one day, purely by accident, we open a book, and there it is - it hits like a wall of memory - that picture. Not only that but I was keen for the conversations to read across the page, matching each line with the action of the character. In fact, I had been dozing off the food and activities of our Thanksgiving day, when the girls woke me with numerous whispers of "Shh! For my other two books, i am always asked if i used paper cut, as they look quite like it, but in fact I did not use paper cut at all when creating the artwork and it was all pencil and digital. He has worked for several large national and international advertising campaigns, and created murals in London, Dublin and Tokyo.

Quite suddenly three goon type characters trying to trap a bird popped into my head, that it would be great if there were three, each with a different plan.We Have a Plan is dark, but it's the darkness of night, the darkness of woods where even the light of the moon only makes things look various shades of blue. He was listed in Time magazine's 'DESIGN 100' for the work he has been doing for Fair Trade clothing company People Tree. Created digitally in a folk-art style, with everything but the animals done in a captivating blue monochromatic palette, it told more of the story than the words on the pages.

The humor comes from the futility of the group's plan and the silly results combined with the juxtaposition of the youngest's successful methods. Usually full colour printing is in CMYK, but the whole of the book is printed in only CMK (blue,magenta,black) and the only yellow that appears in the book at all is in the colour of the birds.Another pattern that can be noticed is that the eyes of the bird are mostly closed at the beginning, focussing on itself not watching or observing its surrounding. The colours used in the picturebook are predominantly blue shades, the characters have an almost worn out or torn paper look to their outline.