Author: Irena Kobald
Illustrator: Freya Blackwood
Copyright: 2014
To all the “Cartwheels” of this world, past, present and future- may you find comfort and understanding in these pages. Never give up; make your blanket grow!
-Irena Kobald
Irena Kobald uses #OwnVoices to write this children’s book. She wrote this book based on her observations of her daughter welcoming and teaching a new friend from Sudan. Kobald herself is an immigrant. She moved from Austria to Australia. Now she teaches English to indegenous children in Australia.
The amount of text on each page is short and distanced between each line making it easy for the reader to decipher between the black text and vibrant backgrounds. The text either blends with the illustrations or creatively wraps tightly to the illustrations for easy comparisons while reading. Every aspect of the text is located on the lighter portions of medium from the illustrations so it is easier to read. The illustrations I believe hold the reader to the text since the text is so short. It would be easy to read through this book and not think about the several metaphors and emotions of the characters.
Illustration medium was comprised of the illustrator using a combination of watercolor and varying oil paints. Freya Blackwood used engaging vibrant colors that made the continuous two page spreads of illustrations stimulating to the reader. To me the illustrations demonstrate characteristics of murals. Many of the two page spreads were energetic in everything that is going on and the images of people, objects and buildings weren’t refined but rather didn’t encompass a defined border. Along with this, there seemed to be a progression of colors that Freya Blackwood used in her illustrations. For representing Cartwheel’s home country, Blackwood used many variations of brown, red, and oranges. This is similar to the colors and images on Cartwheel’s old blanket. The orange and red color scheme is also what portrayed Cartwheel and her Auntie when they move compared to the people and surroundings around them. For the new blanket and new country they take refuge in, the colors are more blue toned with yellow and green bright accents. Shown below are the two images that portray the old blanket compared to the new blanket and how different colors and images are illustrated.
This children’s book is a great example of how to help students develop a critical lens when reading. This critical lens allows the reader to decipher how the text is purposefully telling a story and how the illustrations can also influence the reader in analyzing the text. According to Jon Callow (2017), “Global literacy includes role of advocacy and citizenship, where the political nature of any text- from a nursery rhyme to a country’s constitution- can be explored and critiqued” (p. 231). With this idea, when reading aloud to students, we need to allow time for them to articulate both what the words are trying to send a message about, but what it means in relation to the world they live in. For example, Jon Callow describes how the critical lens reflects student thinking when looking at the image below.
A reader may not take any notice in how the metaphor of a waterfall is reflecting how Cartwheel is overwhelmed in a new country where the sounds she hears are not similar to those she used to live. Along with this, the critical lens allows the reader to look at the image and take notice that Cartwheel and her Auntie are not up close to the reader, rather they are smaller and may have been overlooked. Personally, I overlooked this critical lens that the illustrator was trying to develop of how Cartwheel may have been feeling and how Jon Callow describes a relationship with power dynamics in a new country. This power dynamic goes along with the themes of inclusion and friendship.
One metaphor that was implicit through illustrations is how Cartwheel’s blanket represented her development of the languages she knew. On her orange/red blanket, Cartwheel’s language was based on her living experience in that country. When observing how she was learning a new language from her new friend, they were simple illustrations of simple vocabulary such as ice cream and apple. She was also learning from listening to others, when looking at the illustrations, in multiple two page spreads, there were objects such as an apple that looked like it was paper and was flying towards Cartwheel like a paper airplane.
The theme of inclusion can be discussed in how students in a classroom can incorporate a friendly atmosphere for those that are new or may be different in terms of racially, ethnically and culturally. Another main idea that can be discussed is how Cartwheel felt lonely throughout the book. Both the author and illustrator both implicitly and explicitly portrayed Cartwheel’s loneliness and how her only comfort was her own culture from the previous country she lived in. By learning and growing from the help from her new friend, she became more comfortable in self identifying as having two different cultures influence her everyday and how both are supportive in who she is as a refuge.
Kobald, I. & Blackwood, F. (2014) My Two Blankets. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
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