Research: Children's Books
The Octonauts
Meomi. (Wong, Vicki & Murphy, Michael) 2006, HarperCollins Children's Books. 'The Octonauts: & the Only Lonely Monster'
The Octonauts are a series of books produced by the Meomi team. In this case the story follows the Octonauts (a team of underwater explorers) finding a 'sea monster' and attempting to help it find other's of its kind.
Stylistically this book has the sort of harmless, soft-toy esk look I'm interested in using for my own book, thought perhaps a little bit too much so for the sort of story I wish to tell.
The way text is incorporated into the illustrations in this book is very interesting, the majority of it is simple type setting in the almost traditional way, inter spaced through out that though are bits of far more dynamic text like in the example page above.
As well as playing with the use of text, Meomi also used the layout of the book to their advantage as shown in the four pages above. The book is landscape, however when the Octonauts proceed to travel the four corners of the world in search of another of the monster, the layout and orientation of the page is used to show this. In the north, the orientation stay the same as the rest of the book, when they travel east however the page now sit 'facing east' as it does later when they travel to the west. When they visit the south, the page is actually printed 'upside down'. It's this playful approach to layout that makes the books so interactive to read, without stepping into the fiddly world of pop-up books.
The Octonauts
Meomi. (Wong, Vicki & Murphy, Michael) 2006, HarperCollins Children's Books. 'The Octonauts: & the Only Lonely Monster'
The Octonauts are a series of books produced by the Meomi team. In this case the story follows the Octonauts (a team of underwater explorers) finding a 'sea monster' and attempting to help it find other's of its kind.Stylistically this book has the sort of harmless, soft-toy esk look I'm interested in using for my own book, thought perhaps a little bit too much so for the sort of story I wish to tell.
The way text is incorporated into the illustrations in this book is very interesting, the majority of it is simple type setting in the almost traditional way, inter spaced through out that though are bits of far more dynamic text like in the example page above.
As well as playing with the use of text, Meomi also used the layout of the book to their advantage as shown in the four pages above. The book is landscape, however when the Octonauts proceed to travel the four corners of the world in search of another of the monster, the layout and orientation of the page is used to show this. In the north, the orientation stay the same as the rest of the book, when they travel east however the page now sit 'facing east' as it does later when they travel to the west. When they visit the south, the page is actually printed 'upside down'. It's this playful approach to layout that makes the books so interactive to read, without stepping into the fiddly world of pop-up books.
