Introduction
This unit of work was created in partnership with The Garret and accompanies Nic Brasch’s interview with Graeme Base.
The following activities and tasks have been designed to be studied and used in full or in part, depending on the teaching context. The activities have been formulated for use with a whole class or small groups or can be adapted to suit smaller groups or individual students and can be spread out over class time. Each activity is linked to a specific ‘digestible’ section of the Graeme Base interview and the relevant portion of the interview is noted at the beginning of the activity. It would be useful for teachers to borrow a set of Graeme Base picture books from the library, at least those ones with longer narrative elements. Alternatively, Base’s website has samples of each book which can be deployed for most of the activities deriving from the interview.
Activity 1: Influences and genre
00:00–06:00
Having listened to the start of the interview, direct students to discuss the following in small groups:
- Are you familiar with the fictional works that formed Graeme Base’s main influences which he discusses in the interview?
- If you are not familiar with R.R. Tolkien’s work, do some web research and investigate. You might be more familiar with Peter Jackson’s films based on Tolkien’s novels. What genre of fiction do these works represent?
- Which other writers or speculative fiction works does the author mention in the same genre later in the interview?
- Have you seen any stories that cross media platforms? When you see a film or TV program based on a book, how do you compare the two, even though they are different media?
- Do you think different media ought to be compared or treated as different stories altogether because of the different constraints each has in its production? This question is important to consider if you are using one form of text to respond to in a different mode or form, such as a digital story in response to a picture book (one of the later assessment options).
Activity 2: Aspects of genre
What fantasy works have you read or viewed? List the conventional or typical narrative elements you are familiar with in fantasy or other speculative fiction genres such as sci-fi, using the table below.
| Fantasy | Other speculative fiction genres | |
| Typical characters | ||
| Plot or storyline: problems to be solved |
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| Setting(s) |
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| Complications (which cause tension) |
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|
| Images or other graphics | ||
| Resolutions |
|
Activity 3: Group discussion around personal experience and cultural influences
23:54–25:30
This segment of the interview deals with the influence of travel on the author’s ideas for his picture books.
How did Graeme Base turn an environmentally important issue into a global one in a counting book, The Waterhole?
Synthesising task
Have you travelled somewhere where you have seen a problem occurring with the environment? You may have done some armchair travelling by watching a David Attenborough documentary or one you have watched at school (check ABC Education for resources to choose a possible issue and a setting). Similarly, you may have read authors such as Isobelle Carmody who have strong environmental themes running through their work.
Write an anecdote about at least one place you have visited with school or family that you really enjoyed or where you learnt something important.
Activity 4: Discussion around themes, issues and motivations
33:52–36:07
How can picture books explore important themes and issues, such as in Uno’s Garden, The Waterhole and The Sign of the Seahorse? What central issues run through these books? If you do not have the picture books check some sample pages from these books on Base’s website.
Discuss how successfully these books operate in terms of messages and layers of meaning in the graphics. Can you think-pair-share your experience of these and other children’s books that dealt with important topics and which taught you something when you were younger?
Other picture book authors who may be of help here are: Alison Lester, Leigh Hobbs, Anh Do, Shaun Tan, Margaret Wild, and Pat Grant. A search of the Reading Australia catalogue will yield many more authors and titles.
Activity 5: Discussion on the development of approaches, style and individual writing characteristics
36:08–46:00
- Where does Base start with writing a picture book?
- Which does he suggest is more important as a starting point: the art work or the text or other factors?
In this section of the interview, Graeme Base says:
If you’ve got a monster that lives under your bed, figure out what it looks like and draw a picture of it. And then mess about with it. Draw a funny face on it or add some extra big ears or something like that and you begin to own it, control it. You’re nailing your demons to paper. And you do that as an adult, if you worry about things, if you’re stressing about things, write a list. Write exactly what is worrying you and you begin to take hold of it and deal with it.
Synthesising task
Experiment with some of Base’s approaches, strategies and styles by adapting these approaches to suit your own ideas and themes.
Make a list of things you worry about or feel strongly about and design a poster which raises awareness of one of those issues. Try drawing it first – it doesn’t have to be a brilliant drawing – you can make it funny. If it is something personal, you can hide it by concealing it under a paper cover, just as Graeme Base’s books often contain some paper ‘engineering’ (e.g. the disappearing waterhole in the book of that name).
Activity 6
This activity could be undertaken in small groups by assigning a different book to different groups.
Build on the work from Activity 2 (see The Author) and then compare and discuss how Base’s early reading experiences show up in his picture books. In particular read a few books that develop narrative, such as: Enigma, The Legend of the Golden Snail, The Eleventh Hour*, The Last King of Angkor Wat, or The Amazing Monster Detectorscope.
* Reading Australia title
Using the table below think about these questions:
- Do any of these conform to the fantasy genres (Activity 2) or are there elements of other genres in the narrative elements?
- How do the visuals in picture books add other dimensions to these elements?
- How important are the visuals in determining the storylines in these picture books according to the author in the interview?
Track the conventional (genre-specific) and/or unconventional elements through at least TWO of Base’s narrative picture books.
| Base’s picture book | Images, symbols, motifs, special features (from the interview) | |
| Typical characters | ||
| Setting(s) | ||
| Central problem(s) | ||
| Plot or storyline synopsis | ||
| Complications (which cause tension) | ||
| Resolutions | ||
| Language and style | ||
| Surprise elements | ||
| Other factors? |
It may be helpful in this discussion section to direct students to Base’s website, where samples of the texts can be viewed if you do not have access to the complete picture books.
Activity 7
Following this small group retrieval work, share your thoughts and observations – firstly within your group and then with the whole class – through the following questions:
| Plot | How do you think the early influences of reading fantasy help to drive the narrative in Base’s picture books? |
| Character and voice | Almost all his stories are written in the third person with Base as the omniscient author, but often featuring an animal as the central character. Why does Graeme Base say he uses animal characters? |
| Setting | How important are settings in picture books? Is there anything special about the settings in Base’s picture books? |
| Language and style | In the longer picture books, the narrative is almost always in rhymed verse. What did Base say about music in the interview and how do you think the music of language influences the way he delivers the narrative in the text? |
| Point of view | In picture books point of view is almost always visual. We see the world created in the book through ‘viewing’ the central character. In picture books, the visuals always extend the narrative – where is your eye drawn to in any given page in Base’s picture books? For instance, the snail inside the crossbones motif is repeatedly hidden in The Legend of the Golden Snail. |
(AC9E8LA07) (AC9E8LE03) (AC9E8LE05)
Activity 8: Structure and meaning in context – more detailed ways of reading visuals
Reading images has its own technical language, known as visual grammar. The key elements of this system are:
- Subject Matter
- Colour
- Shots (this can also refer to pictures)
- Vectors
- Position
- Salience
Have students conduct a visual text analysis by applying these to the cover image of The Legend of the Golden Snail (or any other Graeme Base picture). Use sticky notes to annotate class copies of the texts, OR access the covers from the publishers’ websites and print or insert them into a shared document.
Scootle resources (you will need to create your own account to use this resource fully) on visual literacy linked to the Australian Curriculum could also be useful teaching devices for this task.
Activity 9: Reading the visuals further
In the interview Base says of The Eleventh Hour:
Maybe I could do a mystery story and rather than hide the clues in the text, hide the clues in the artwork… I’ve always been writing and drawing to the inner child in me, so unless I’ve changed imperceptibly without realising it. I love detail, I love puzzles, I knew Morse code when I was a kid and would send messages like that and other things, the ink pen codes and other codes and hidden things in pictures.
Find examples of where framing through use of visual symbols extends the meaning of the main narrative. These occur around the edges or borders or even hidden within the pictures themselves. Trace these through the sample pages of:
- Enigma, where codes are embedded in the text to help solve the mystery of the disappearing magic show items; OR
- Uno’s Garden which has statistics and ‘facts’ embedded in the top third of the right pages.
What is the effect of these verbal/visual devices on your reading?
Synthesising task
Both of the picture books above have a theme of sustainability. Compose or choose a brief poem (a haiku will do well) and choose a set of ‘free to use’ or Creative Commons licensed downloaded images to illustrate it using available software (for example PowerPoint or Photo Story 3) to assemble it digitally. Make sure at least one of the images is symbolic of the main message of the poem. This provides practice for the culminating rich assessment task which follows.
Trying it out for yourself
Try writing a poem (this can rhyme or be free verse) based on your viewing of an environmental issue, for instance on ABC Education or ABC News.
Now choose some images, either hand-drawn or downloaded (make sure they are copyright compliant or Creative Commons licensed) or shoot some original images that go with the poem (between five and ten). Import these into a digital storytelling software program such as Photo Story 3.
Add a soundtrack of music or narration (or both if the program allows more than one layer of audio), again ensuring its copyright-free status or restricting its use to within your school environment.
You could share your work with others (teachers and peers) in an electronic gallery, by uploading your digitised poems to the school intranet or a closed Instagram site, where you can view each other’s works and add constructive comments, likes or questions.
Culminating rich assessment tasks
Based on The Garret’s interview with Graeme Base, use his ideas and approaches to create ONE of five optional texts, spanning digital, graphic or written genres.
In his interview (from 20:40–21:45), Base says of his ideas for books:
As a book illustrator …and writer, you’ve got potentially a tiny bit of influence over thousands of kids, and … It was occurring to me that I could actually do something and say something worthwhile. I always had a love of a natural world, I wanted to lift up kids to love it and if you love something, you treasure it.
Option 1
Using an app such as iBooks Author for tablets or Mac computers, or a progressive slide show in PowerPoint if using PCs, create an electronic children’s picture book on the theme of sustainability. You don’t have to be able to draw to do this task: you can take your own photos or download and manipulate existing Creative Commons licensed photographs. The narrative, however, should be original and can rhyme.
Option 2
Create a digital story adding soundtrack and narration to an original poem based on the theme of sustainability. Your storyline and subject matter could be based on:
- a local issue such as the health of a nearby creek or waterway
- the story of disappearance of an animal or species
- declining populations in small rural towns
- a development issue relating to the environment
- one of the environmental issues featured in ABC splash programs featuring the environment
- your choice of topic which can be negotiated with your teacher.
Option 3
Most of Graeme Base’s stories have rhyming text. Create a rhythmic slam poem to be recorded or performed live to the class on the theme of sustainability. In the style of Animalia, see if you can incorporate alliteration as much as possible into the poem.
Option 4
Before his work was published, Graeme Base worked in advertising. Design an advertisement on the theme of sustainability using the techniques you have learned about visual literacy and visual grammar.
Option 5
Design and create a poster either hand-drawn or using software and which raises awareness of an issue you feel strongly about in class. You may choose to use an animal as a central character or motif in this poster.
Important tips about audio-visual content for all tasks
If your final products are to be screened outside of your class environment, please use found images, music loops and/or soundtracks from freely available sources such as the Dreamstime (deploy ‘Dreamstime free’ for freely available stock photographs). For other remixed media, use Creative Commons.
Assessment criteria
- evidence for success in learning about the author and his media
- understanding the conventions of the chosen genre
- appropriate use of and alignment between graphics and text
- basics of grammar, spelling and punctuation are appropriate for the given audience, purpose and context of the task.
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