FMP Blog 6: Storytelling
My biggest worry about this story is that I somehow churn out a cliché, feel-good, predictable story, that has been written a million times before and bores everyone’s socks off. Fortunately we have a collection of children’s books at home that demonstrate that even a book for 7 year-olds can be mysterious, exciting, spooky, and even a little bloodthirsty if handled correctly. Speaking at a live event for McNally Robinson in launching his latest book ‘The Skull’ (2023), Jon Klassen discussed the balancing act he treads when broaching darker material for a young audience. In reference to his first book, ‘I Want My Hat Back’ (2011), Klassen explains, “The fate of the rabbit, I don’t like to say it outright… I’m not going to take you places that you’re not ready to go. You’re going to take yourself when you’re done,” (Klassen 2023a). But before I can delve into that complexity, I need to consider the wider themes of my project.
Since I was interested in the idea of the community dog, one area I was keen to expand upon was the differences between western individualism and the community driven values of eastern cultures. We touched on Edward Said’s ‘Orientalism’ (1978) in our very first MA module on this course, and since then I have been even more aware of possible reasons for these differences. Spending a significant portion of my life in both of these contexts has allowed me to observe the differences in thought patterns, inequalities and priorities. The recent conflict in Gaza and its reportage in western media outlets vs middle eastern has also brought the use of language in particular into sharp relief.
David Robson asserts that our social context shapes the way we think, and that this varies greatly depending on our geographical location. Those living in the west tend to be “independent and self-contained”, whereas eastern cultures lean towards being “entwined and interconnected… valuing the group over the individual,” (Robson 2017). With Sri Lanka falling into the latter category, this matches up with the community dog and its many carers. Robson’s thoughts on our differences in problem solving also link up nicely to my earlier observations on the UN’s cluster approach in the very first FMP Blog, i.e. that a more “holistic” approach that focuses “more on the relationships and the context of the situation,” would likely be more accepted and hopefully more effective in most Asian cultures (Robson 2017).
More directly related to the area of picture book illustration is Hannah Faye Chua et al’s observations on how participants from the west and east read images differently — the former predominantly looking at the main focus of the image while the latter spent more time considering elements that were not the main focus, searching for context (Chua et al 2005).
This idea of interconnectedness within the community and even between man, animal, and inanimate living things is surprisingly a common theme in many indigenous cultures globally. According to Manly P. Hall, it is clearly expressed in Native American mystic beliefs, through that emerges the orenda — a word-of-mouth method of passing on a sense of integrity, duty and respect for ancestors (Hall 1985). Hall goes on to point out that similar concepts had a strong presence in China, which ties up with studies on Native American DNA that show traces of east Asian origin. The orenda can be seen as “the mysterious power of the story” and a “telling of glories from the past” (Hall 1985). This suggests that having a folktale element to my own project might inspire more of a determination in the young audience I hope to reach.
Case Study: The Skull
At just over 100 pages, ‘The Skull’ is more lengthy than most of Klassen’s books. It is based on a folktale which he misremembered, and added his own ending to. It is interesting to compare this passing-on of a story with the way the orenda is described. Were embellishments added? Details forgotten? Probably. It’s up to the storyteller and the kind of impact they want their tale to have. At its heart, it is a story about friendship, bordering on the romantic during the ballroom dancing scene. One of the reasons Klassen stuck to his reimagined ending after being reminded of the original story was because the friendship ended after the curse was broken. In his view, it was the friendship that made the story. The skull and Otilla are each other’s safe haven — separating them seemed wrong. So his own ending saw the two characters coexisting peacefully in the grand old house.
Throughout the story, Otilla’s blossoming friendship with the skull lulls us into a cosy, tender atmosphere, which is intentional by Klassen. He elaborated on how if, as the author, you “take care” of the characters in the young reader’s eyes, it allows you to “take them to places” with the storyline later, because the reader is assured that, once the danger has passed, there is a safe space to return to (Klassen 2023a). He also warns the reader well in advance of the scariest element of the book, so that when they get to that page, they are prepared.
The story is divided into five parts, each beginning with three elements from the section as a teaser. Each title page is followed by a vignette illustration, allowing us to glimpse into a scene — its context — but saving the full page illustrations for high-impact moments. Vignettes are further used as comic book panels during a high-action sequence. The only spot illustrations appear at the chapter headings. There are only three full page spreads with no text in the whole book: Otilla stumbling across the old house, Otilla pushing the skeleton off the ledge, and Otilla and the skull falling asleep, safe now that the danger has passed. The font was deliberately chosen for its open and friendly quality, due to the dark nature of the story. The first and last illustrations mirror each other, allowing us to come full circle with the storyline (Klassen 2023b). Klassen’s use of materials — mostly graphite and markers with seamless digital manipulation — reflect the grittiness of the subject matter, and his limited use of colour allows us to observe the perspectives, textures and emotions more clearly. He made a point to tell the story through not just the text but through the interplay between words and visuals, as well as the materials mentioned, which provide added context (Klassen 2023a). This links back to the eastern perspective raised by Chua concerning how we read images (Chua et al 2005).
I wanted to conclude on some thoughts about the kishōtenketsu story structure, but this is getting quite long. I’ll experiment with it a bit and post about it next time.
References
CHUA, Hannah Faye, Julie E. BOLAND and Richard E. NISBETT. 2005. ‘Cultural variation in eye movements during scene perception’. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 102 (35), 12629–12633. Available at https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0506162102 [accessed 7 January 2024].
HALL, Manly P. 1985. Native American Mysticism [lecture]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dx-oPRWtkOk [accessed 2 January 2024].
KLASSEN, Jon. 2023a. An Afternoon with Jon Klassen (The Skull: A Tyrolean Folktale) [talk]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/live/BSxyypdiMLI?si=NfupSImWJP81_vu4 [accessed 5 January 2024].
KLASSEN, Jon. 2023b. The Skull: A Tyrolean Folktale. London: Walker Books Ltd.
ROBSON, David. 2017. ‘How East and West Think in Profoundly Different Ways’. BBC Future 19 January [online]. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170118-how-east-and-west-think-in-profoundly-different-ways [accessed 21 November 2023].
