Playground Circus
The sun’s out — let’s go to the park!
My first picture book! Written by Chrissy Byers and published by Ford St in 2019.
A story about a girl with a wild imagination, a mother lost in smartphone notifications, and a little boy with a blue rabbit. The simple story follows the girl imagining her way through a full blown circus, but the visuals lead us through a number of worlds that come in and out of sync. There are many visual threads for young minds to follow as they re-read the story from different points of view.
Client: Ford Street Publishing
Year: 2019
Medium: Ink, watercolour, digital tomfoolery
Collaborators: Chrissy Byers (author), Nan McNab (editor / art direction), Paul Collins (publisher), Grant Gittus (book design / typography)
The process
Context: Ford St approached me to illustrate a manuscript by Chrissy Byers, a picture book about a very modern day at the park.
Brief: The book contrasts the modern phenomena of ever-present smartphones with the free imagination of young children. As our protagonist moves through the park, she imagines each piece of playground equipment as a different element of a circus.
Approach: With a very minimal text, I worked to design a series of stories and interactions between characters that could hold the attention of the very young, and give them a way to visually ‘read’ the book by themselves.
The endpapers in the hardcover edition provide clues for a kind of ‘find the object’ game hidden throughout the book.
Results: I worked with ink, watercolour, and digital collage to make the illustrations. I contrast the rough, textural feeling of watercolour (representing the child’s free imagination) with a more flat, digital effect emanating from the Mum’s smartphone world.
While the book is along the lines of a moral cautionary tale, I see it as about more than just smartphone use. Both the child and the parent have many things to think and wonder about, but through all the distraction, they are both happiest when engaging directly with one another.