I’ve spent weeks thinking about how to express my concerns over Harry Woodgate’s award-winning book, Grandad’s Pride, written for children with a reading age of 3+ (Amazon US) or 4+ (Amazon UK).
You have misrepresented the author's quote about their own illustrations, *from 2019*, specifically in regards to illustrating art based on a particular novel (which I'll assume is the reason for including such exaggerated symbolism).
Even if you could in good-faith apply that quote to their more recent work in children's books, that's not necessarily evidence that whichever potential symbolism *you* are focusing on is what the artist intended nor something they deliberately chose. Perhaps it's just some odd projection of your own?
Nice piece - eerily similar to the threads I've posted on Twitter on this subject. It's an interesting conundrum - an author admits to hiding images in his work and then a lot of people see those images and recognise them as having particular meanings. Perhaps it's all just a total coincidence, who knows?
You have misrepresented the author's quote about their own illustrations, *from 2019*, specifically in regards to illustrating art based on a particular novel (which I'll assume is the reason for including such exaggerated symbolism).
Even if you could in good-faith apply that quote to their more recent work in children's books, that's not necessarily evidence that whichever potential symbolism *you* are focusing on is what the artist intended nor something they deliberately chose. Perhaps it's just some odd projection of your own?
Food for thought.
Nice piece - eerily similar to the threads I've posted on Twitter on this subject. It's an interesting conundrum - an author admits to hiding images in his work and then a lot of people see those images and recognise them as having particular meanings. Perhaps it's all just a total coincidence, who knows?