Into the Forest

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He was a highly commended runner-up [a] for an edition of Alice in Wonderland (1988), [11] he won the 1992 Medal for Zoo [12] and he was again highly commended for Willy's Pictures (2000). [11] A boy discovers that his father is gone and when he asks his mother she didn’t seem to know. The image of his mother and the boy appear very sad, so sad that it made me wonder what happened to the dad. The longing for dad to come home is significantly highlighted by the number of ‘come home dad’ signs which have been left all over the house by the boy. Anthony Browne writes postmodern picture books and Into The Forest is an excellent example of intertextuality. WHAT IS INTERTEXTUALITY?

The Visitors Who Came to Stay by Annalena McAfee (Hamilton, 1984) – winner of the 1985 German youth literature prize for picture books in its German-language translation retaining Browne's illustrations Think of fairy tales. There is no single ‘original’ version of an oral fairy tale, only endless permutations which evolve over time and change a little each time someone tells it anew. There is no beginning and no end to a fairy tale. Each tale has endless repetitions, giving birth to endless differences. You would need to be sensitive to children who might not have secure family relationships, might have lost a grandparent to illness or have an absent parent, some young children might also be a little afraid of the forest and what lurks in it – however none of these things would be concerning if it were managed well. Works of art don’t exist in isolation. Readers bring a lot to a story, including their entire lives until that point, but also every story they’ve ever been exposed to. When an author points the reader’s attention to another text, this technique is known as ‘intertextuality’.

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Despite being an unusual book, it is a good example of a traditional story telling - written in the first person narrative with some direct speech and a clear “beginning/middle/end”structure. It would make a good model for writing – for example developing alternative endings to traditional tales. In 2001–2002 Browne took a job as writer and illustrator at Tate Britain, working with children using art as a stimulus to inspire visual literacy and creative writing activities. It was during this time that Browne conceived and produced The Shape Game (Doubleday, 2003). French philosopher Gilles Deleuze used the word ‘rhizone’ which maps onto the literary concept of intertextuality. INTERTEXTUALITY: A Discussion with Chad Hegelmeyer

You could explore it in the context of traditional tales – investigating all the references and perhaps considering alternative “happy” endings just as Anthony Browne has done here. Anthony Browne". Walker Books. Archived from the original on 14 December 2007 . Retrieved 26 December 2007. D. Martin, "Anthony Browne", in Douglas Martin, The Telling Line: Essays On Fifteen Contemporary Book Illustrators (Julia MacRae Books, 1989), pp.279–90.

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Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (MacRae, 1988) – an edition of the 1865 classic, highly commended for the Greenaway [11] [a] and winner of the Emil [15]