CCBC-Net Archives
Insights into The Three Pigs
- Contemporary messages sorted: [ by date ] [ by subject ] [ by author ]
From: Nicholas Glass <nick>
Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2002 19:23:39 -0600
Hi.
I had the opportunity to interview David Wiesner on video camera in his studio and learn all about The Three Pigs. The comprehensive program on David is available for anyone to freely access on http://www.teachingbooks.net. (It contains a professionally?ited movie, an extensive written interview, a teacher guide for using David's books & a collection of Internet links that are all useful for learning about David Wiesner.)
In this program, there are many insights you can garner. I'll highlight a few below.
***You can see and hear David read The Three Pigs in my four-minute movie. It is curious to me how he adds descriptors that aren't in the actual text. The transcript of his reading the beginning of the book goes: "[Reading] The wolf said, "Then I'll huff and I?ll puff and I'll blow your house in." So the wolf huffed and he puffed and he blew the house in. And Pig Number one says, "Hey, he blew me right out of the story." And, in fact, he has. The Big Bad Wolf, in huffing and puffing, has blown the pig right out of the frame of the picture and out of the story."
***You can see the original art for the four stages of developing this book.
(Sketchbook, full-size dummy, tracing & original art.) You also get to see a really cute, palm-sized mini-dummy of the book in this movie.
***You can learn about the genesis for this design concept. David says in the movie: "There was a graphic idea that I wanted to play around with: What's behind the pictures in a book? [He recalls being 7-years old and watching Bugs Bunny....] Elmer's chasing Bugs around. They go through the hollow log. They go through all the usual stuff. But all of a sudden they run right out of the cartoon. I laughed and then I gasped. I just was like,
?oh, my gosh, what was that?? My seven-year-old self was really amazed by this ability to jump out of this one reality and into another.
Here was the story about the three pigs. Great. I could draw that. But also they had a great reason to want to leave their story. Every time it gets read, two of them get eaten up. How much fun can this be? So that set in motion for me the real emotional undercurrent of the story, which was these characters who were looking for a place where they could belong. "
***You get an elaboration on David wanting lots of white space in the book design -- so much that he actually had in an early dummy of the book "a page that was completely blank in which the characters, as they're flying around on their airplane, fly right out of the page, and it takes several pages for them to fly back into the picture. I love the idea that they could just go off someplace where we couldn't actually see them and then sort of -- oh, here they are, over here. You really have to kind of find them.
I didn?t in the end use the double-page blank spread for a variety of reasons. One, it would have taken too many pages to set it up to visually read well, which pleased the Houghton Mifflin production department to no end, because I'm told that bookstores would have seen this double-page blank spread and thought that something was wrong with the book and returned it. This has been confirmed by some bookstore owners when I tell this story."
There's much more about David and other authors on TeachingBooks.
It is my mission that by using Internet technologies everyone receives unparalleled access to children's book creators, and will better understand the spirit and personality behind the books and discover exciting ways to share these insights with children.
- * - * - * - *
Nick Glass TeachingBooks.net 722 Emerson Street Madison, WI 5371518
p 608 257.2919 f 608 257.0120 e nick at teachingbooks.net
http://www.teachingbooks.net
Received on Thu 31 Jan 2002 07:23:39 PM CST
Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2002 19:23:39 -0600
Hi.
I had the opportunity to interview David Wiesner on video camera in his studio and learn all about The Three Pigs. The comprehensive program on David is available for anyone to freely access on http://www.teachingbooks.net. (It contains a professionally?ited movie, an extensive written interview, a teacher guide for using David's books & a collection of Internet links that are all useful for learning about David Wiesner.)
In this program, there are many insights you can garner. I'll highlight a few below.
***You can see and hear David read The Three Pigs in my four-minute movie. It is curious to me how he adds descriptors that aren't in the actual text. The transcript of his reading the beginning of the book goes: "[Reading] The wolf said, "Then I'll huff and I?ll puff and I'll blow your house in." So the wolf huffed and he puffed and he blew the house in. And Pig Number one says, "Hey, he blew me right out of the story." And, in fact, he has. The Big Bad Wolf, in huffing and puffing, has blown the pig right out of the frame of the picture and out of the story."
***You can see the original art for the four stages of developing this book.
(Sketchbook, full-size dummy, tracing & original art.) You also get to see a really cute, palm-sized mini-dummy of the book in this movie.
***You can learn about the genesis for this design concept. David says in the movie: "There was a graphic idea that I wanted to play around with: What's behind the pictures in a book? [He recalls being 7-years old and watching Bugs Bunny....] Elmer's chasing Bugs around. They go through the hollow log. They go through all the usual stuff. But all of a sudden they run right out of the cartoon. I laughed and then I gasped. I just was like,
?oh, my gosh, what was that?? My seven-year-old self was really amazed by this ability to jump out of this one reality and into another.
Here was the story about the three pigs. Great. I could draw that. But also they had a great reason to want to leave their story. Every time it gets read, two of them get eaten up. How much fun can this be? So that set in motion for me the real emotional undercurrent of the story, which was these characters who were looking for a place where they could belong. "
***You get an elaboration on David wanting lots of white space in the book design -- so much that he actually had in an early dummy of the book "a page that was completely blank in which the characters, as they're flying around on their airplane, fly right out of the page, and it takes several pages for them to fly back into the picture. I love the idea that they could just go off someplace where we couldn't actually see them and then sort of -- oh, here they are, over here. You really have to kind of find them.
I didn?t in the end use the double-page blank spread for a variety of reasons. One, it would have taken too many pages to set it up to visually read well, which pleased the Houghton Mifflin production department to no end, because I'm told that bookstores would have seen this double-page blank spread and thought that something was wrong with the book and returned it. This has been confirmed by some bookstore owners when I tell this story."
There's much more about David and other authors on TeachingBooks.
It is my mission that by using Internet technologies everyone receives unparalleled access to children's book creators, and will better understand the spirit and personality behind the books and discover exciting ways to share these insights with children.
- * - * - * - *
Nick Glass TeachingBooks.net 722 Emerson Street Madison, WI 5371518
p 608 257.2919 f 608 257.0120 e nick at teachingbooks.net
http://www.teachingbooks.net
Received on Thu 31 Jan 2002 07:23:39 PM CST
