Who conquered who?

Front cover

The conquerors by David McKee has been on my 'to blog about' list for a while.  It's one of his later books, first published in 2004 - I think he's only published one more since (Denver, 2010).  It's typical of McKee's work, a modern day parable created with crayon filled ink-line drawings, and spreads covered with figures all looking the same until you peer closely and see that each is uniquely different. It's brilliant and fits alongside his other picturebooks about war and conflict: Three Monsters, Tusk Tusk, and Six men. 

My copy is paperback and a 2011 edition... as with all good picturebooks the front and back covers are one continuous illustration, the conquerors marching into the book. 

Front and back covers

The black background of the back cover gives the smiling soldiers an almost menacing look as they follow in lines behind a smiling general. All stocky, with pin legs, yet faces as individual as any, with hooked, bulbous or ski sloping noses!

The front end papers ...

Front endpapers

...show the conquering taking place, at least this what we can presume. A red cannon ball zooms across the spread, and smoke and fire covers any view of anything in particular. 

The title page and dedication are strikingly peaceful after all the bombing ...

Copyright and title pages

The large title hangs over an illustration of the General and his family, guarded by two soldiers, smiling out at the reader. They look too kind and nice to be conquerors! 

But our story begins by telling us that indeed they are...

Opening 1

The General ruled over a large country which had a strong army and a cannon. Every now and then he'd attack another country nearby, "'It's for their own good,' he said. 'So they can be like us.'"  Like us?  What are these people like? The women are blond and the men (and boys) wear scull caps.   

Opening 2

In the next opening we see the General ordering his troops to attack, the canon is shooting and the soldiers are marching towards a town, a middle Eastern town, blocks of white buildings with the occasional dome. The town's men are baldheaded, and its no coincidence that they are all wearing similar clothes, quite different from those we have seen worn by the people ruled by the General. The smoke and fire evokes the scene we saw on the front endpapers. 

And so the General has conquered all the countries except for one very small one, and he decides he might as well conquer that one too. The people wave their troops off with white hankies, smiling from the windows in their tall white apartment blocks.  But upon arrival the General is surprised. There was no resistance, they were greeted as if guests. The following pages show the General and his soldiers gradually being won over by this small country and its friendly people. 

Opening 4

In opening 4 we see that their homes, bungalow-like houses with tiles on the roofs, are different to any we've seen so far. They wear different clothes too, the men wear hats, but not scull caps, and the women wear Muslim headscarves and long robes.  You can see the soldiers feeling unsure as the people give them lodging. In the following spreads, we are shown the soldiers eat and drink with the people, share jokes, stories and songs. They play their games and listen to their stories. They watch the people preparing their food and enjoy eating it.  Then, because there was no resistance or trouble, the soldiers have nothing to do but help the people with their chores.   At this the General gets angry and sends the soldiers home replacing them with new ones...

Opening 7

In opening 7 we see the new soldiers arriving, pristine and serious, marching together in unison towards the small country.  The other soldiers are a muddle, they are talking to each other, laughing and jolly - one looks like he is in love, his eyes are closed and he is smiling to himself. Another is arriving late, his hand on his hat as though straightening it after being off duty.  Soon the General realises he doesn't need many soldiers in this small country, so he goes back home, leaving a few soldiers to keep an eye on things. The people watch smiling as the soldiers and their General march away. 

Opening 9

... and what do the soldiers do?  Take off their uniforms and happily join the people in their daily tasks.  We can see everyone greeting them and indeed the soldiers seem very happy about the whole business!

Back at home the General gets on with being a General.  But things were different. 

Opening 11

The little country is present in the food he smelt, the games he sees his people playing and the clothes they are beginning to wear.  And if we look at the illustration we can see images that resemble those we saw in earlier spreads: games, muslim headscarves and long dresses, hats with brims and different tunics and the General is smiling as he smells the delicious food they are cooking in the kitchen. "Ah! The spoils of war." he thinks... 

Opening 12

The final spread shows the General sitting on his son's bed, in mid song.  They both look happy and content and as we read the words we smile to ourselves, for the General can only remember the songs from the little country he conquered, and so these are the songs he sings. 

Not quite finished... 

Back endpapers

Those end papers bring our narrative to a peaceful end.  The sun is shining over a land no longer at war ... a conquered land.

Can the violent ways of conquerors be countered by unorthodox means?  Is it possible to win with non-violence and kindness?  What is the nature of colonisation?  How do we see the customs of others around us? There's so much to talk about after sharing this picturebook, that its simplicity is misleading.  

Another book about being conquered and colonised is Rabbits (Marsden & Tan), which I have blogged on here. Its visual narrative is aggressive in comparison to McKee's The Conquerors, yet we are left with similar questions. 

A picturebook to make our students think, and hopefully talk about their thinking. 

Running to freedom

Front cover

Underground by Shane W. Evans recently won The Coretta Scott King Book Award, which is given to African American authors and illustrators for outstanding inspirational and educational contributions. I'm writing about it in my blog for I find it visually fascinating, and it awoke a curiosity I could not shake.  I've already  written about a picturebook which could be read and shared with a view to talking about historical events, The Rabbits, and Underground is another  such title.  Based on the Underground Railroad,  a complex network of people, who helped slaves escape to freedom during the 1800's, it tells the story of how people got to freedom. A minimal verbal texts is accompanied by fabulous  illustrations, achieved with a mixture of collage and paintwork. Evans uses a very blue pallet, a night blue, dusky and dark yet everything is clearly visible in its blueness. This blue is  partnered with subtle uses of white, sharply cut bits of white.  Yellow appears too, moving from representing captors' windows and flaming torches to highlighting and shining upon conductors (those who helped the slaves) and the colour of day and freedom all in one.

Back cover

The picturebook: The front cover portrays fleeing slaves, dark and sinister, the whites of their eyes accentuating their look of fear.  Rays of light emanate from behind them, rays of hope possibly. The back cover is not part of a continuous picture, but instead the ending. The endpapers are plain dark blue, the colour of night and as we turn the pages we pass the title page, different only in that it is painted blue and there are a number of stars scattered across it.
The first opening also contains the copyright information and a dedication, those dark skinned faces from the front cover appear again, only just visible. We might not know what this story is about, but already we are apprehensive. 

Opening 2

Whisper this spread, "The escape.": the leading figure has his finger on his lips as the three creep away.  The whites of their eyes shining out at us, looking left, looking right, looking left.  In the background you can see the light shining from a curtainless window of the owners' house, that together with the light of the thin crescent moon casts a thin shadow across their bodies. 
And so each spread opens onto more dark, dusky blue. Shadowy figures hunched across the pages, "We are quiet."...

Opening 4

The yellow in this spread accentuates "The fear." It touches each runaway face like orange tinged caresses, but they remain hidden. Is the torch bearer friend or foe? The sheriff in the background is sending his men elsewhere.  And so, "We run. We crawl."  ...  

Opening 7

"We rest." All but daddy who keeps his eyes open, watching. 
It seems like an endless night, but it must represent many nights. The next page turn shows us one of the conductors, those in safe houses who helped the fleeing slaves. 

Opening 8

"We make new friends:" The yellow light is welcoming, the runaways are inside safe.  But their journey continues. "Others help." "Some don't make it." "We are tired." and suddenly we turn the page ...

Opening 11

The yellow light shines as the day begins, lighting a huddle of people. It took me several views to realise that it is a woman and a makeshift mid-wife, for the woman is having a baby, her belly bulging, her bent knees highlighted by the sun. Man and children look on as the wife moans. 

Opening 12

"The light." The woman blinks as the light shines upon her face.  Is it the woman or the man who declare what's immanent?  Or is it the event of birth they are referring to? In Portuguese and Spanish when a woman gives birth they refer to the giving of the light (dar a luz). It's the beginning whatever it is, the light over a new horizon. As we turn the page, the triumphant father holds his child high up and the words tell us, "The sun."
The final opening is jubilant :..

Opening 14

"Freedom. I am free. he is free: She is free. We are free."

If we close the book and linger on the back cover, we realise now who the happy family depicted there is.  The newly born baby is the center of attention, a child born in freedom. 


Evans himself admits that for most of us it is difficult to imagine what being a slave was like, being owned by someone else, someone who dictated what you did, how you did it and when you did it.  It is possibly easier to 'relate to opening the door to assist someone.'  Many risked their own lives by aiding and abetting runaway slaves. This picturebook cleverly mixes the flight of the slaves with the assistance they were given.  Its shapes and colours share an emotion that touches all of us.  Could we use this picturebook with students learning history through English?  I'd like to think so.  


On a website about to this picturebook, Shane  W. Evans writes:

In so many ways the simplicity of this book says it all. This experience for me as an author and illustrator was one of the more dynamic experiences in my career. This journey for me was truly one through the lives of a people searching for freedom in their hearts and souls. These journeys lead me "home" in so many ways back to my own community today. If we look around us we can see the spirit of what this movement represented. The idea of freedom is a powerful one that in this world has a duality; this quiet journey of "underground" reflects that in a powerful way. This book not only pays homage to the many that decided to "steal away to freedom" in the 1800's, it pays homage to those that continue the fight for freedom today.

Who was Goldilocks?

Front cover

Goldilocks and the three bears is a well known children's story in English speaking countries and when I first began using it in Portugal in the early 90's very few Portuguese pre-school educators knew it, it's more well known now I think.  It's a story we use in ELT for numbers and family (mummy, daddy and baby); every thing comes in threes (three bears, three bowls, three chairs, three beds) , and there are some nice adjectives (hot and cold, hard and soft and just right!).  We assume , if we think about it at all, that Goldilocks is a spoilt little brat, going where she has not been invited, doing what she's not meant to do and generally well deserving of the fright she gets when the bears find her in their bedroom. Anthony Browne, takes us on quite a different visual journey in his picturebook Me and You.  In an interview about his picturebook, he says: 

"I always thought that Goldilocks got a rough deal in the original and I'm trying to redress the balance. How do we know that she was a greedy, selfish little girl? Perhaps there was a reason for her to enter the bears' house? I'm trying to tell the story from two different points of view: the baby bear's story shown in warm, reassuring coloured pencils, and Goldilock's harsher existence painted like a graphic novel, in sepia tones."  The result is a perfect picturebook, to be contemplated from front to back cover, with nothing missed out. 

Back and front covers

The front and back covers of the hard back edition are one whole image, a grassy area in front of a long row of terraced houses.  The bear family are presented on the cover, looking out as us, as though we are taking a photo of them all, a happy little family. In the background, by chance we've also photographed a solitary figure, walking head down, hands in pockets.  

Front endpapers

The endpapers are plain with no illustrations, however the baby blue and orange are prominent in the two narratives we find in the picturebook.  The blue belongs to the bear and his family and the orange to the sepia illustrations of the little girl. 

Title page

The title page contains two illustrations which are copies from later in the book.  They are fittingly inside frames, two very different characters in different worlds, and placed under the three title words, "Me and You", for the story that follows is told in the voice of the little boy bear. The two illustrations are different in both tone and style, the bear is drawn with coloured crayon, the bright colours contrast the duller, darker sepia tones of the watercolour illustration of the little girl, who has a tiny piece of auburn hair sticking out from under her hood, (it almost connects her to the bear).  The title uses different fonts which emphasise the difference between the two characters as well. The dedication on the facing page reads, "For all the underdogs". 

Opening 1

The little boy bear introduces us to his house, a warm yellow home, number 3 (of course!) in a spot of bright green, in the background the rest of the city appears to be big and industrial-like, (but those chimneys and towers could also be tall tree trunks).  There's a menacing looking wolf-like dog entering the illustration, but everything else looks serene and peaceful.  The three bears are each seen from separate windows, in different parts of the house and a solitary red ball bounces alone in the garden outside.  

Opening 2

The book continues in double page format, verso in sepia showing us the little girl's story and recto in bright, picturebook-like colours showing and telling us the little boy bear's story.  The little girl's world is daddy-less, it's cold and drab, they live in a small house in the city, and when we see mummy pause in front of the butcher there is confirmation that there may not be much money to spare either. Now the recto, and if you look carefully at the pencil crayon illustrations, you will see everything is outlined in the orangey brown of the bears, uniting the images within their world. Daddy is tall and wide, behind a more fragile mummy and their cute little son, they ooze affluence - I love mummy bear's skinny ankles, all rich mother's have skinny ankles!  

Opening 3

As little boy bear tells us his story, the story we know so well about porridge that's too hot to eat, the little girl's story visually unfolds - a story we don't know at all, about a little girl who sees a balloon, tries to catch it and gets lost.   We see her face properly for the first time and she is frightened.  

Opening 4

The bears walk in their very posh neighbourhood - three together, yet very seperate, little boy bear describing the events. "Daddy talked about his work and Mummy talked about her work.  I just messed about."  (Look carefully at the background trees, notice anything odd?) We see the little girl walking, getting more and more lost and suddenly coming upon the bears' lovely yellow house in the middle of the greyness she has been runing from.  It is glowing, enticing her with its warmth and she pushes the front door open.   As she moves around the table trying the porridge, the bears walk back home.   As she tries the three chairs (and breaks the little one), they walk through their open front door, mummy and daddy accusing each other of leaving it open.  As the little girl walks up the stairs, we see the three bears begin the  someone's-been-eating-my-porridge-routine.  She tries the beds as the bears find the three chairs...'"We'd better take a look upstairs", whispered Daddy.  "After you, Mummy." '

Opening 9

The little girl is asleep, comfy in little boy bear's bed, her auburn hair flowing as though it's part of the wood grain in the headboard.  The bears are quietly climbing the stairs, '"Do be careful dear," said Daddy.' 

Opening 10

And there they are!  We see the same scene from both perspectives. The little girl in her sepia watercolour illustration is suddenly confronted by three scarey bears.  Browne has skillfully painted their fur to make them look prickly and mean, the background is dark, a darkness which seems to radiate from the bears. We are feeling so sorry for the little girl whose red hair is reflected in the bears' eyes. We see her terror in the little boy bear's version, as he continues with his well known monolgue ... "Someone's in my bed,"I said, "and they're STILL THERE."  Even the bears carved into the head board are surprised. 

Opening 11

The little girl flees. As the little boy bear describes her actions, we see her leave the bedroom, go down the stairs, out through the front door and into the street.  As she runs into the rain we can just make out the bear family peering through their windows at her, the little boy bear upstairs, the adults downstairs.  The graphic novel frames take the girl back into the grey city, past railings, walls topped with barbed wire and others covered in graffiti.  We see this as well as glance across at the little boy bear.  In his colorful picture he is deadpan looking through his window.  At first we are uncertain if he is in or out, the reflection of a wooded landscape looks like it is behind him... the forest that belongs to the original story maybe?  "I wonder what happened to her?" he says to himself.  
The ending is a hopeful one, I say this as Anthony Browne has described it so himself. And of course it is, the illustrations in the final spread are full of hope, at least the final frames are ...

Opening 12

Janet Evans interviewed Anthony Browne in her latest collection of chapters Talking beyond the page  and he explained how the story wasn't originally in its present form. He had thought of telling two stories, first the bear's then the girl's, but it was the editor who suggested telling two stories simultaneously, in parallel, with a hopeful ending. It works wonderfully and we all sigh a deep sigh as we see the girl reunited with her mum.  Do we think about the bear again? A lonely little chap, in his pretty house with a lovely garden.  


Anthony Browne is a genius - this picturebook is challenging on many levels. It needs to be read and re-read, and the children/teens/young adults you are showing this picturebook to, need to be encouarged to talk through what they see and think about as they piece the puzzles together.  When Browne was the UK Children's Laureate  (2009 - 2011) he said the following: " ... Picture books are for everybody at any age, not books to be left behind as we grow older. The best ones leave a tantalising gap between the pictures and the words, a gap that is filled by the reader's imagination, adding so much to the excitement of reading a book."   Me and You does just that and can be used with children and teenagers as a spring board for discussion. 


If you go to the CKG website here, you can download some excellent visual literacy activity sheets for a number of picturebooks, including Me and You.  

The true story by A. Wolf

Front cover

"You may think you know the story of The Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf - but only one person knows the real story. And that person is A. Wolf. His tale starts with a birthday cake for his dear old granny, a bad head cold and a bad reputation. The rest (as they say) is history."

This is the blurb on the inside of the front cover of The true story of the 3 little pigs! It's all about perspective really.  This picturebook shows us the story we know and love from Wolf's perspective, and he's certain he was framed! 

I've already featured a picturebook that takes this traditional story and gives it a twist, The three little wolves and the big bad pig, making it very appropriate for older learners.  This too is a great title for the teenage ELT classroom.

The true story of the 3 little pigs was written by Jon Scieszka and illustrated by Lane Smith, who together, with Molly Leach as designer, create incredible picturebooks. 

As with all these adaptations of traditional stories, the humour comes from the reader's previous knowledge and understanding of the original story.  This picturebook is particularly special and has been written about quite extensively by academics.  It's considered an example of a postmodern picturebook due to the way the illustrations subvert the words.  Probably one of the reasons it's not used much in ELT.  I hope that by talking about it here, someone will have a go and do great things!

So let's take a look at this example of a postmodern picturebook!

The font cover is the front page of the Daily Wolf - naturally the perfect tabloid to  cover this kind of story: headline is the title of our story and the journalist is A. Wolf (though we are also told that there is a real author "As told by Jon Scieszka") The wolf in the photo is depicted as a well dressed gentleman with a polka dot bow tie and wearing studious glasses. The pigs he is supposedly blowing (huffing?) are pink and shiny.  Our reader is also pig, can you see his trotter holding the bottom right corner of the newspaper?

Back cover

The back cover is a collage illustration of a page of a newspaper - strips of columns of text, interrupted by a miniature illustration in the centre, showing the scenes of the crimes.   So not only does the newspaper represent sensationalism, but there's a hint of the courtroom here, of judgement day. 

Title page

As usual I have the paperback edition of this picturebook.  So it opens immediately onto the title page.   A sepia tone to the title page illustration gives an air of time past.  There are four objects placed together in the centre of the aged background, some tufts of straw and a twig set in a measuring jug, all placed on a brick.  Could these be pieces of evidence?   
And so the Wolf's side of the story begins ... He introduces himself.  

Opening 2

The words are matter of fact, in the  first person (for it is the Wolf who is telling the story).  He asks us to call him Al, "I don't know how this whole Big Bad Wold thing got started ...".  The illustration is dark, but you can just make out the prison stripes in the Wolf's sleeves.  He's looking out at the reader quite innocently, and adjusting  his glasses. "Maybe it's because of our diet.", he says. The Wolf is peering up from behind the table top, "Hey, it's not my fault wolves eat cute little animals like bunnies and sheep and pigs.  That's just the way we are. If cheeseburgers were cute, folks would probably think you were Big and Bad, too."  An enormous hamburger shines out at us from the illustration, Lane Smith has used a photo of a real bun, and filled it with all sorts of delicacies.  Can you see the different animals sticking out of the filling? 

Before I go on, just a note about the illustrations: on most openings they are shown in frames.  There's a photograph like feel to them, as though they have been kept in an album, those wiggly edges remind me of the photos my Mum has of her family in the 50's.  Frames around illustrations are supposed to make us feel detached - we look at these illustrations with very little sympathy. 

Opening 3

Even the illustration of long-ago-school-day slate, here in opening 3, is a framed image.  "The real story is about a sneeze and a cup of sugar."   But the introduction has been made, and we are now ready to hear the real story, Wolf's story.  The verso in this opening is a wonderful collection of letters, representing elements from within the story we know so well.  There are references to the three houses made of brick, sticks and straw.  We can see a piggy tail and a snout. A big mouth with a sticky out tongue (E) and the wolf's bushy tail. And the pair of ears at the bottom of the page, encourage the story along ... go on then, I'm all ears! 

Opening 4

"Way back in Once upon a time ..."  A mixture of real and fantasy in one breath!  Here is Wolf making a cake for his "dear old granny" - her picture is on the wall, and if you look closely you will see two rabbit ears sticking out of the mixture.  What a mixture it is too!  Whole eggs, shells and all.  Lane Smith has used collage quite minimally here, the eggs, the butter in the bottom right corner and the picture frame.   Wolf tells us he ran out of sugar for the cake, so he went next door to borrow some. 

Opening 5

The next door we are shown is miles away! And as we all suspect it's  a house of straw, which the Wolf is most derogatory about, "... who in his right mind would build a house of straw?"  Upon knocking on the door, it fell in and that's when his nose started itching!  He huffed and he snuffed... 

Opening 7

And we all know what happened next! 

Opening 8

The words continue to describe the incident in a dead pan sort of tone... "And you know what? The whole darn straw house fell down. ..."  The illustrations in verso look like the aftermath of a huge explosion, and the dead little piggy's bottom is visible in the middle of the straw strewn ground.    Wolf looks visibly perplexed in the verso "... such a shame to leave a perfectly good ham dinner lying there in the straw. So I ate it up." 
This happens once again with the pig who lived in the stick house, the Wolf's nose tickles, he huffed and he snuffed, and the little pig ended up dead and ... "Think of it as a second helping", said Wolf! There's a small vignette, showing us a fat Wolf, holding his stomach! 
At the brick house the Wolf is very upset: not only did the pig tell him to go away,  a pig who looks big and mean through the small window in the illustration, but he also yelled, "And your old granny can sit on a pin!" The straw that broke the camel's back ... the Wolf admitted to going nuts. 
That's when the cops arrived, to find Wolf "huffing and puffing and making a real scene." Funnily enough they were all pink pigs!
And "The rest they say is history."  

Opening 14

The newspaper in this illustration harks back to the front cover, only this time, it's The Daily Pig, and the headlines read "BIG BAD WOLF!", "Wolf: I'll huff and I'll puff ..., "A.T. Wolf big and bad", Red Riding Hood settles dispute out of court", "Canis Lupus - seen as menace".  The hand holding the paper looks like it could belong to Wolf this time. 
The final page shows us Wolf as he is today, the after-the-story-Wolf, the one who's been framed!  He looks feeble alongside the mean looking pig in prison uniform!

Opening 15

It's a brilliant picturebook,  using words and pictures to create an entertaining, clever version of the well-known story.  And of course it makes you wonder about all the other underdogs in traditional stories. What about the wicked step-mother?  The two ugly sisters?  The giant at the top of the bean stalk? Maybe they were all framed?  Great extension activities for students to write alternative narratives based on the underdog. 


As usual there are a number of Youtube films but I like this one in particular, the narrator's voice is so matter of fact and jolly, it's great!  

And there are some interesting resource pages on the net if that's what you like: Scholastic resources; LitGuides and other stuff.


More and more I just love the sharing of a good picturebook, and this one is sooo good.  Giggling and laughing together in class, sharing the visual verbal jokes - there's nothing more motivating for a language learner.