Picture Book Characters with a Passion for Fashion by Garry Parsons

 

Who Wants to be a Poodle - Lauren Child

 

Animal characters in children’s books have long been wearing clothes, but some appear to a have a passion for fashion unbounded.

 

Fabulous Frankie - Simon James Green and Garry Parsons

Having recently illustrated a book where the central character has a penchant for fabulous attire, I have been taking a closer look at what the animal characters on my bookshelf are currently wearing and revisiting some old favourites whose clothing style still remains striking.

 

Rupert The Bear - The Daily Express

Stories where animals appear wearing humans’ clothes preoccupy most of my bookshelf, as they seem to do in most children’s bookshops. This anthropomorphism is everywhere in our lives and has a long history in literature.

Illustration from the Panchatantra

 

Preceding Aesop’s Fables by centuries, personification is a well-established literary device from ancient times such as in the Panchatantra from India, in which anthropomorphized animals illustrate principles of life. 

The Wolf and the Crane - Aesop

Many of the animal stereotypes we are familiar with today originate from these texts and have an influence on what we read today and the roles animal characters take on in our stories but these weren’t aimed directly at children in the same way we recognise animal characters in picture books today.

Before the mid-eighteenth century, the notion of childhood, as we know it now, did not exist. Children were dressed in adult clothes and their natural playful curiosities were largely ignored, at least in literature, where illustrated material for children was virtually non-existent. Later, as the middle class developed and views about children changed, adults began catering to their emotional needs, and animals with human characteristics began to appear in children’s books.

 

Struwwelpeter, considered to be the first children’s picture book that used anthropomorphism in illustrations (1845) is a collection of moral tales that relate what might happen when children don’t heed the advice of parents, to pretty disastrous consequences. Heinrich Hoffmann was a physician as well as author and illustrator of the book and created the stories for his son as a Christmas present.

 

In The Dreadful Story of Harriet and the Matches, Harriet ignores the warnings from the two cats not to play with matches which results in her catching fire and being burned to ashes, just leaving a pair of shoes. The cats in the illustrations are not yet wearing clothes but do use handkerchiefs to dry their tears at Harriet’s demise.

 

In The Story of the Wild Huntsman, the hare steals the hunter's gun and spectacles and turns the gun on him until he falls down the well outside his house.

 More anthropomorphic illustrations followed including John Tenniel’s illustrations for Alice in Wonderland in 1865 which of course included the inimitable pocket watch carrying white rabbit in his plaid jacket and in 1902 came Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit and there is a clear resemblance between the two.

 

Looking at these illustrations now, we can be forgiven for having a nostalgic view of them because of their attire but the clothing that Potter’s characters are made to wear are mainly for them to look socially acceptable for the time, rather than the characters themselves having a desire for fashion.

 

However, The story of Barbar, the little elephant by Jean De Brunhoff, first published in France in 1931 (English edition 1934), tells the story of an elephant who discovers an attraction to tailored suits and fine footwear.  The first story of Barbar depicts his life as a young elephant who is tragically orphaned by a miserable hunter right at the beginning of the book. The distraught Barbar flees from the hunter and finds himself in a wealthy provincial town where his mind is taken off his tragedy by his admiration of the clothes of the people who live there.

 

Everyone in the town appears to share an enthusiasm for fashion including an old lady who helps Barbar out with a place to stay and some spending money. Barbar purchases himself a smart green suit, a lovely bowler hat, shoes and spats. How wonderfully smart he looks!

 

Barbar’s cousins, Arthur and Celeste, find him in the city and help encourage him to return to the ‘Great Forest’ where, with his new found knowledge from the city, he becomes the new Elephant King and marries his cousin Celeste in stylish wedding clothes picked out by a dromedary with an uncanny eye for high fashion.

The attention to stylish clothing perhaps reflects the fact that the original publisher of the books was Editions du Jardin des Modes, a French language women's fashion magazine published monthly in France between 1922 and 1997 and owned by Condé-Nast. The Babar books were the first Condé-Nast publications not specifically about fashion.

In contrast to Barbar, Mr. Tiger, in Mr Tiger Goes Wild by Peter Brown, feels dissatisfied with his formal dress and discovers that he feels more himself in a quadruped stance than the adopted bipedalism of city life. His friends lose patience with him and he leaves the city to reclaim his wildness. When he returns later, he discovers other folk in his community are also feeling the urge to be themselves and abandoning their need for clothing.

 

Clothing plays an important role in the narratives of many picture books - Walter & the No-Need-To-Worry Suit by Rachel Bright, Slug Needs A Hug from Jeanne Willis and Tony Ross and the Goat’s Coat by Tom Percival and  Christine Pym to name a few, but clothing also gives the illustrator a chance to deepen the character they are depicting through what they are wearing, or not wearing, as is the case for Kes Gray’s streaking Nuddy Ned. 

Curious to find out why Sarah McIntyre’s Grumpycorn wears a purple roll neck sweater, she told me…

“I decided Grumpycorn would wear a purple jumper because we usually see unicorns looking very glamourous... I thought it would be funnier if he was wearing his comfy at-home clothes. Also, he has a cosy fire burning stove in his writing cottage, but it still might get a bit drafty in a place that's on stilts over the water. He needs some woolly warmth. And purple? Well, he has all the other rainbow colours in his main, except purple, so purple completes the colour scheme!” In Sarah's sequel to Grumpycorn, Don't call me Grumpycorn, he has a purple space suit. "Purple is a big thing for Unicorn"

As an illustrator of animal characters myself, I find there are always relevant reasons for adorning an animal character with clothing or accessories, be they glasses for a Horse Doctor or a feather boa and glittering hat for a dancing llama.

 As I mentioned at the beginning, I have recently been illustrating the story of a character who’s desire is stand out from the crowd and the only way he is sure he can do that is by being fabulous. But for a flamingo in a lagoon full of fabulous flamingos, standing out from the crowd is not an easy task, even when your wearing a sequin cloak inspired by Kansai Yamamoto!

 

                                                                                  *** 

Thank you to Sarah McIntyre for answering my question about Grumpycorn. Sarah is a best selling writer and illustrator. See more of her work here. @jabberworks

Garry Parsons is an illustrator of many children's books. @ICanDrawDinos

For more picture book passion for fashion, Fabulous Frankie by Simon James Green and illustrated by Garry Parsons publishes 1st June from Scholastic. 

Meet the Monsters (with Mini Grey)

This week I wanted to look at those creatures that perennially inhabit children’s picture books. It’s time to meet the monsters. So off we go…

The One Under Your Bed

One of the first monsters you encounter is the one that lives down the end of your bed. And the one under your bed, and the one in your cupboard. They come out in the dark. You can sometimes feel their breath on the back of your neck as you go up the stairs. They stalk your nightmares. 

So you need stories to help you go to bed alone in the dark, stories that shine a light on those night-monsters, and show how unscary they are really.

Emily Brown is one of my utterly favourite picture book heroines.

In Emily Brown and the Thing, a noisy needy Thing is keeping Emily awake.

Emily, in her no nonsense way, settles the Thing's fears, and show it that is is OK to be a Thing, and that you can even be a Nice Thing.

Chris Wormell is a master of monsters. Here's Molly and the Night Monster.

Molly hears a noise on the landing and her imagination starts to wonder what may be creeping up towards her bedroom....

...the creatures get more terrifying - this is the moment that the doorknob turns. Molly catches the monster with her bedsheet. But what she catches is no monster, but a mummy. (The nice sort.)

Anything might be living in the dark crannies under the stairs.

And it might need feeding - which is what William does, in Helen Cooper's The Bear Under the Stairs.

The Thrill of Being Frightened

From roller coasters to horror films – being frightened is so exciting. We are drawn to the magnetic thrill of monsters. My childhood favourites were the stop-motion monsters of Ray Harryhausen: the metal giant Talos, the hideous Cyclops, the sword-fighting Skeletons. We enjoy being frightened – monsters are terrifying entertainment – which is part of what picture book monsters are there for too.

As a child, the highlight of my year was when Jason and the Argonauts was on TV and I could watch the giant Talos come creaking to life.

It was hide-behind-the-sofa time when these things dug their way out of the soil.

Sara Fanelli's mythological picture book monsters aren't so scary.

A Hydra brought to you by the power of Fanelli's magical collage.

Awesome Monsters

Travellers Tales from medieval times were full of the fantastic beasts that roamed the Earth. The world was an unexplored place, vast and dangerous, with plenty of room for mermaids, sea serpents and krakens. These monsters were probably based on a glimpse of something real - a giant squid, a manatee, an oarfish. Monsters were responsible for the unexplained - earthquakes, tsunamis, inexplicable fossils.

The discovery of dinosaurs in the 19^th Century raised the fascinating possibility that once monsters really did stalk the earth. 

The dinosaur imaginings of Crystal Palace

 And when we can see further into the distant past of life on Earth we find creatures that are way crazier than humans could ever imagine -  like the extraordinary animals of the Cambrian Explosion. (Here's a Cambrian Top Predator.) 

The more we discover about the creatures that really DO stalk the earth, the less odd the hippogriff and the kraken seems to be. 

Here's a deep sea beauty.

Sometimes picture book monsters are Force of Nature monsters  - enormous and awesome and maybe not actually trying to kill us.

Chris Wormell's Sea Monster lurks in the deep sea gloom and mostly watches, but subtly helps save our boy from drowning.

Outwitting the Monster

This is the story of the small person who outwits and triumphs over the Monster – from David and Goliath to the Billy Goats Gruff.

The monster is usually a bit stupid and fixated with getting something to eat.

In Joel Stewart's book, a Big Blue Beastie is determined to gobble up Dexter.

But Dexter's imagination is brimming with way better ideas for things to do than eating small boys.

The Monster Next Door

This is the one who’s a misfit, the one who’s not like anyone else, the one that everyone avoids. This monster may be in the wrong place, even in the wrong universe.

Shaun Tan's Lost Thing is searching for a place where it can belong.

 

 

In The Song From Somewhere Else (AF Harrold and Levi Pinfold), Frank reluctantly befriends the oversized boy that everyone at school thinks is weird. What seems to be a monster in his cellar is something entirely different.

Kathryn Cave and Chris Riddell's Something Else lives alone at the top of a steep hill.

He doesn't fit in with everybody else, who avoid him, and label him as Something Else. We've all felt like Something Else. Especially at school.

Monster As A Way of Life

But you can revel in being a monster. Being a monster can be your job, a proud way of life. 

Sarah McIntyre and Giles Andreae's Morris the Mankiest Monster wouldn't want to be anything else.

You can see how much Sarah McIntyre has enjoyed making Morris's tongue-spots and mould and mushroom clumps.

In When a Monster is Born (Nick Sharratt, Sean Taylor) it's nice and simple. There are just two possibilities. Either it'll be an Under-You-Bed Monster, or it'll be a Faraway-In-The-Forests Monster.

Parallel Monster Universes

Monsters can shine a light on our world, by inhabiting a parallel opposite world – the Upside Down, where beauty and ugliness and cleanness and filthiness and day and night are reversed.

In Jitterbug Jam (Barbara Jean Hicks, Alexis Deacon) a young monster is terrified by the idea of a boy being under his bed.

In Monster World, daytime is scary, and a time for sleeping, and the worst thing is to see "that awful colour the sky is when you wake up in the middle of the day and can't see, it's so bright out."

 

Fungus the Bogeyman (Raymond Briggs) is a respectable proud bogey, doing a hard night's work scaring people. BogeyPeople just aren't comfortable unless everything is damp and slimy, and are horrified by the dry bright conditions that the 'DryCleaners' (AKA surface dwelling humans) live in. 

 

 

Here's a favourite page from the Fungus Plop-Up Book where we can just enjoy the sheer disgustingness of Bogey home squalor. And there's working toilet paper and a PLOP UP TOILET - oh joy!

You Unleash a Monster that Gets Out of Control

When you are small and there’s little you have power over – you can dream of being able to whallop your enemies, unleashing your inner monster. We all know Where The Wild Things Are and the power of rumpus, the joy of destruction.

Having an enormous powerful pet/friend, when you’re small and powerless, is a useful thing. When you feel small you can have a monster as your powerful avatar. Maybe the monster fulfils a need, maybe it arrived because it was needed. But maybe the monster has more power than you can handle.

The Iron Man (pictures by Chris Mould)

From A Monster Calls (Patrick Ness, Jim Kay) - a Yew Tree is summoned, and grieving Conor gets to unleash destruction.

That's the trouble but also the thrill with monsters: you make a monster, or summon a monster - and it will probably get out of control.

You Are The Monster

You discover you are the monster. You look in the mirror and find out that how you look on the outside doesn't reflect how you feel on the inside. Or you bravely go outside and everyone screams and runs away.

Here's the monster from Chris Wormell's The Big Ugly Monster and the Little Stone Rabbit. Because this is a picture of the monster, not the real thing, even though this looks pretty hideous, we're not actually "getting the ugliness at full strength."

 

This poor monster is so ugly that nature abhores him. Sunshine turns to chill when the monster comes near and all living things shun him. The monster sculpts the animals who invariably run away from him; one stone rabbit is strong enough to bear the monster's gaze without breaking. The monster passes the rest of his days in the company of the little rabbit. And is happy. After the monster is dead nature starts to grow back around his cave.

 

I love this book but it is so troubling. It's like a what-if thought experiment. Chris Wormell has created a universe where ugliness is a terrible thing. The monster is a monster on the outside but not the inside  Can anyone see beyond his monstrous coating to the delicious filling within? Not in this book. As monsters go, the monster could be considered a quite handsome monster - his misfortune is to be living in a book where he is the only monster.

And what about when you’re beautiful on the outside and monstrously poisonous within? 

One book I was constantly reading as a monster-obsessed child was this Dictionary of Monsters and Mysterious Beasts (bit of a scary cover):

Under 'S' is the Squonk.

The Squonk lives in the hemlock forests of Pennsylvania. It is consumed with grief caused by the ugliness of its own skin, which 'is said to be ill-fitting and covered with warts and moles,' so it can be tracked down by the weeping noises. 

"One man thought he had captured the Squonk after he lured it into a sack" but on his way home the sack became gradually lighter. "When he opened the sack all he could find were tears and bubbles."

Is the monster all about our ideas of beauty and ugliness and how, especially in fairy stories, beautiful is good and ugly is bad? There has been historic story-injustice to those perceived as monsters. Poor Medusa was hard done by. Happening to be born ugly is very bad luck if you live in a fairy tale. 

But the fairytale monster is often an enchanted disguise: a prince who has been transformed into a beast. I have to confess I've always preferred the princes when they're in the Beast state, not when they've got their coronets and pale blue tights on.

An enchanted prince from The Singing Ringing Tree, slightly disturbing film from the 1960s. (He's the one on the right.)

Your Inner Monster

We all know that monster from Not Now Bernard.

The monster is disconcerted to discover that Bernard's parents haven't noticd he's not Bernard. Personally I think Bernard got eaten right at the beginning and it's all about how little attention grown ups pay to what's going on around them, but you may have other ideas. Is the monster Bernard? Is it Bernard's Inner Monster? 

We come to another side of the monster coin: the monster feelings that can take charge; feelings that surge and rage through you, or overwhelm you, like being buffeted about in a storm. You can let the monsters be in charge, you can be engulfed by them. Or you can try and find a way to live with your inner monsters.

In Debi Gliori's Night Shift, depression is personified as a dragon who has arrived, unwanted. "Perhaps it drifted in at night, like fog." It grows and grows, with hollowness and dread. 

The Night Shift is learning the Night Skills to persevere until one day something has shifted, learning the beauty in stripiness, and that your dragon can be a harsh teacher.

Eva Eland's When Sadness Comes to Call was this year's winner of the Klaus Flugge Prize.

When Sadness comes to call you can feel overwhelmed. 

But when Sadness comes to call there are things you can do. You can "listen to it. Ask where it comes from and what it needs." You can do things together, you can make sadness welcome. 

With these picture book monsters we meet our inner monsters – so that they don’t have to be in control. We can get to know them, have them beside us rather than being inside them. 

Making Friends with Your Inner Monsters

In the film Spirited Away, No-Face is a spirit with a colossal hunger, who feeds on emotions but also just about everything else it can devour - like it is trying to fill an infinite inner emptiness.

But it turns out what No-Face really needs, is to be put to work. Sometimes what your monster was needing was something useful to do. No-Face finds a home where he learns to knit and sew, and the spirit is calm.

We can make friends with the inner monsters - beause they're not necessarily the baddies. In fact those raging emotions are there to force us to act. That furious anger helps you stand up to bullies, or whatever happens to be wrong, and fight for justice. The hurt and upsetness help you to feel empathy and aid those in pain. The sadness helps you feel the preciousness of what is lost and what is. The anxiety - is part of being prepared to face uncertainty and danger. Our monsters are an evolutionary part of being human. Like pain, they evolved to take care of us in a precarious world.

So, whether you wake up with the Monkey of Dread sitting on your chest...

...or your particular flavour of Dread is a multi-eyed tentacle beast...

...it may be time to stop trying to keep it out or chop all its tentacles off...

...but invite it in.

Lastly, if you'd like a collection of metaphorical monsters, here's a selection for you:

I’ve only managed to examine a tip of the monster iceberg! Do you have a pet monster picture book? Do let me know in the comments here, or on Twitter at: @Bonzetta1 or at @PictureBookDen.

 Mini's latest book-involvement is The Book of Not Entirely Useful Advice, with AF Harrold.