Voices in the Park

Product Information

Anthony Browne's world-renowned artwork is full of expressive gorillas, vibrant colours and numerous nods to Magritte and other artists, while being uniquely Browne's own style. Children are encouraged to use their skills of inference and deduction to discuss each character's opinion of one another, and will also explore the effect the illustrations have on their understanding and enjoyment of the book. Voices in the Park addresses the social divide and prejudice that parents inflict on their unbiased children.

Allocate an individual ‘voice’ to groups within the class and ask them to make a list of ideas about the different characters.Piggott in a state of perpetual domesticity: fixing breakfast, washing dishes, making the beds and vacuuming the carpets. The reason we keep asking these questions is to get the children to focus on who is telling the story so we can have more discussions once we have read all four voices.

This story tells the tale of many different people but the one thing they all have in common, is that it starts at the park. A visit to the park is described by four different "voices" in this brilliant picture-book from British children's author and artist Anthony Browne, highlighting the importance of perspective, in shaping our experience, and the insights that can be gained, from acknowledging that reality is drawn from a wealth of such perspectives. By doing this, I was able to notice that each 'voice' viewed the park differently in terms of its environment, which would create discussion about the reasoning behind this.Browne creatively represents the characters by using gorilla heads on human bodies to show the personalities of a snobby mother and her gloomy son, as well as as an unemployed father with his cheerful daughter. On Thursday morning at a quarter past ten, Joseph Kaye noticed something strange about the kettle,'' reads the intriguing first line of this imaginative picture book.