Think about the hopes and dreams of the different voices who are speaking. Could you describe these to a friend? For the carefree Smudge, an example of the Female Maturity Formula, her job is to keep her father, and then the boy, happy. ANAGNORISIS

Even the trees in the illustration below reflect the hunched posture of this father and daughter on the way to the park. Anthony Browne is a highly acclaimed and multi award winning author and illustrator whose books are known and enjoyed for their surreal illustrations and thought-provoking themes.Throughout, Voices in the Park, there are different types of art used in the book. Here is a list of a couple of those styles and how the book's illustrations relate to them. Each style can be used in an illustration with another style too. For Smudge's father, the type is a less formal type of font that is bolded. There is just more of a noticble rounding of the letters, not as rigid as the ones for the font listed above. The informal bold text, along with the type of grammar of the sentences, leads one to conclude he is a working class person. The fact of it being in bold makes one envision he has a deep, rough voice. The text can be a very useful example for children to look at, as a model for writing in different perspectives and as a model for how to effectively create links between the text and illustrations. How are the names symbolic? The homophonous names show that they are all equally human. ‘Smith’ is more common/popular than ‘Smythe’, suggesting some pretension on the part of the rich family. Children will have much to discuss as they dig deeper into Anthony Browne’s multi-layered narrative, says Pie Corbett...

student exemplars - modelled writing resources used for the “fifth voice” assessment task to guide students as to what their final product should look like. How can you tell who is telling the story? (This is where you can notice the font change as well as how the story is being told)Like any book we discuss, the goal of critical literacy is to get the kids thinking about the text is a new way. The reason I enjoy this book is because there are four different perspectives, which helps the conversation later as you discuss more about who is telling the story. As you read more stories, even bedtime stories, you can ask the simple question, who is telling this story? Who is not represented -or- who’s voice is missing? Just making children away that stories can be told in multiple perspectives is key to starting to truly look at literature critically. Did you learn more about each character as you read the book? How did your opinion of each character change?

The animals still have an animalness about them even though they’re obviously meant to be humans. We associate gorillas with ‘big, tough, strong’, therefore ‘big, tough, strong’ nature of humans which then stand for teachers, adults, big people, bullies. Whilst I teach in an Australian context, these books are not linked to specific Australian content and would be well-suited to any English speaking classroom. Spelling and grammar are UK/Australian.

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The text and illustrations work together well to portray the events of that day for each character. Without the illustrations, it wouldn't be possible for the reader to interlink the character's stories in this way nor understand the cleverness of creating a book that requires close observations of the images. Could you create your own story in which different people have different points of view about the same event? which pictorial ideas are playful and which suggest something meaningful that adds to your understanding; how the characters are shown – what do the colours and images suggest to you about the characters – what do they make you feel?; The fourth, and last, voice is the little girl that belongs to the sad father. I will note that the author uses the word “twit” to describe the angry women, so if you would rather avoid that, just change the word to “lady”. But I like to use that as an opportunity to discuss wording and what that word means. Again you are going to discuss who is telling the story and who’s voice is missing, if anyone.

Everyone in this story is each other’s opponent, except for the dogs, whose easy friendliness juxtaposes against the reserve of the human characters — each at a different point on the ‘reserved’ spectrum.

paint pictures of an everyday scene in the local park or playground but change a few objects into something else (a tree might become a face); The story portrays four viewpoints on a sequence of events that occur within a park which subsequently mean two families from different socioeconomic origins meet in a park. A boy called 'Charles' is struggling within an elitist, judgemental and restricted environment that doesn’t allow him to express himself and feel free. Due to his mothers oppressive nature his voice is being oppressed. The young girl from a lower socioeconomic status does, however, have more freedom, including a voice.