Wordless picturebook review ~ Free Fall by David Wiesner
I chose to review this book for a couple of reasons. First, I love fantasy books that take the reader to far away, vivid lands that seem almost dream-like. Second, I like the additional challenge of interpreting images of these far away-vivid landscapes from my own point of view. I feel it adds and builds to my own imagination when the author's voice is absent. A picture may be provided but it is up to me to read into the pictures and what happens in the gutters between the pictures. I am positive that this book could be "re-read" several times and the reader would pull more away from the story every time.
Text
Text within Free Fall can only be found on the cover since this is a traditional wordless picturebook. The cover gives us enough information in the author's note to derive that the story takes place within the imagination and dreams of a young boy. The author's note also informs the reader that the book is an adventure book.
Additionally a review from BOOKLIST states, "… a classic example of fantasy and adventure.... Just as in a dream, the book presents strange locales and unusual characters, which keep the action moving and the pages turning." This adds to the readers knowledge that they are about to jump into a young boys dream.
Both the author's note and BOOKLIST review give the reader enough background information that aids in interpreting the wild illustrations they are about to enter. In fact, since the first image is of a young boy sleeping with a book on his chest, the wording may be redundant.
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| Free Fall page 1 |
Literary Techniques
Imagery is important in a picturebook. It aids in interpretation of the story being told. Free Fall begins the story with an illustration of a young boy who has fallen asleep with a book on his chest. In the beginning we don't know what kind of book he was reading but it doesn't take long to discover that his book was full of castles, dragons, knights, and a wizard in subsequent images.
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| Free Fall page 3; image 2 |
The subsequent images are dream-like or surreal and sometimes spooky or eery. He follows a map to a kingdom where the king a queen at first appear real but their kingdom and its borders between farmlands, because of their square like appearance, quickly turns into a chessboard and the king and queen's knights are chess board pieces.
We can also attribute the knights chess like quality to an Allusion, which is "A reference to something that those who share our knowledge (literary, historical) or
background (cultural) will understand" (Crum, 2006). Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland utilized playing cards as the queen's guards. This added to the fantasy genre that Carroll was attempting to play on. When I see Wiesner's knights as chess pieces, I think back to Alice's adventures in dreamland as well. Allusion can also be tied back to the title of the book, Free Fall. Almost everyone can relate to falling in a dream. In fact, it is one of the most common dreams and researchers have found that individuals will dream about falling at least 5 times in their lifetime (DreamDictionary.org, n.d.). In Free Fall, not only does the reader picture falling in a dream but they imagine the character falling into various portions of his storybook and playing out the main character in each section. **Note: Allusion can be tricky in a wordless picturebook for the simple fact that when someone from another culture is "reading" the book, they may of may not be able to establish the connection to popular cultural lore that the author is attempting to make because it acquires background knowledge, according to a study in which Chinese children where asked to interpret "foreign" picturebooks (Liu , Akrofi & Janisch, 2012).
Wordless picturebooks, as far as I know or at least through this particular wordless
picturebook, do not contain onomatopoeias, alliteration, refrain, rhythm, or rhyme. Personification in this story could be used in the example of the chess piece. Simile or a metaphor could be used in the certain pictures such as the drinking glass flooding the map in which the young boy is traveling across. Or perhaps in the images of the boy jumping in and out of the book, literally flipping through the pages with another character. However, I think the strongest literary tool would be Suspense and Foreshadowing. The reader does not know the storybook like the character does. Therefore the reader has to follow the story, interpreting the pictures as he or she follows the story to the next illustration. Since it is a dream, this adds to the suspense and the twist and turns of the story. The reader has to rely on the boys next move in the dream to find out how he is going to deal with the dragon. Since it is a dream, it is a rather jumbled story.
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| Free Fall page 12; image 1 |
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| Free Fall page 6; image 2 |
This image of a book appearing in the tree line, lets the reader know that the young boy can escape danger by literally flipping the page of the book or jumping through the book. At this point he no longer has to deal with the dragon. So this part of the story is over and he is off to his next adventure.
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| Free Fall page 14; image 2 |
The image to the left is filled with a half dream or surreal state of the images the boy just left and half realistic images of him laying in bed. This directs the reader out of the dream adventure and back to reality.
Front Cover Image
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| Free Fall |
The front cover illustration shows a boy floating over a body of water on a rather large leaf. This dictates that the story has some sort of surrealism embedded in it since this is no ordinary event.
The words Free Fall are often connected to a dream in our culture. Another possibility is free-falling from an airplane but since the picture dictates a surreal event, then the words free fall would point back to a dream.
Primary Medium for the Images in Free Fall
The images within Free Fall are very soft drawings that combine Renaissance type imagery of dragons, knights, royals, and castles with surrealism.
Image for Story Development
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| Free Fall page 2; image 1 |
In my opinion the 1st image on page 2 is the most telling image in the whole story. First, the smoky image on the right side of the picture evokes a dream like state that the boy has entered. Second, the storybook laying on the bed opened to the atlas or map of the story he last read gives the reader a prediction element of the worlds they are about to travel through with the main character. Finally, the bedspread eventually becomes the borders (farmlands, forest, etc..) within the story. All of the elements that this image foreshadows, is part of the boys experiences in real life and within his book.
Repeated Imagery
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| Free Fall page 7; image 1 |
A repeated image throughout the entire story is the book the boy was reading when he fell asleep. The author returns to this idea over and over again so that the reader remembers that the boys imagination is currently trapped in the binding within the book he last read.
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| Free Fall page 13; image 1 |
Another image that is repeated throughout the story is the chessboard/ pattern of his bedspread. The two seem interchangeable. To me, the author is trying to do one of two things - remind us that the boy has not left the confines of his bed throughout the adventure in which he is under a checkered bedspread with a chessboard propped up beside his bed. Two the checkered pattern could represent a sense of security since so many of us when we are little rely on our bedspread to protect us from the "boogie man." This is a rather intense dream, even if it is from the pages of his book and his imagination.
Irony, Metaphor, and Metonymy
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| Free Fall page 5; image 1 |
At this point in the story, the boy has already met the king and queen and has been escorted to the castle with a horde of war like chess pieces. Up to this point, the images have been brilliant and the young boy seemed self assured. By this image, the scenery has turned dark and what he thought was a knight guarding the castle was only an illusion as the knight falls to pieces and over and the side of the castle. His face also turns from excited to be in the adventure to unsure. Without wording the metonymy of the image foreshadows dark events in the next few pages through a darker, scarier picture than the previous images. The irony in the events that follow place the main character as the knight who is left to defend the kingdom that is falling apart around him. However, he does not choose this path for long, as he literally jumps from the storybook page into another page beyond the dangers of the dragon. In a dreamlike state a dragon is actually a metaphor for what, "...stands between you and your true self… and… represents the fearsomeness of the unconscious, for one who is still afraid of what may be lurking there" according to Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung ("Myths-dreams-symbols," ).
Characterization
The main character of the story is a young boy with a vivid imagination that is closely connected to the story he was reading when he feel asleep. We do not know the story he was reading until we delve into his dream which is full of ancient stories of kings, queens, and dragons. This lets us know his interest lies within the magical realm.
A young child would identify with the adventure itself. The adventure evokes the imagination with magical creatures, floating on leaves, the main character turning into a giant, and unusual characters. Young children would also be able to sympathize with the main character as he is presented with obstacles such as the dragon and experiences fear causing him to run from the danger.
The main character is placed in a position where he is the hero and the center of the story. Children would relate to the main character because their own world is often the center of their universe. It is hard for a child to relate to others' strife or adventures. A child could easily place themselves or see themselves as the main character is this wordless picturebook.
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| Free Fall page 8; image 2 |
The character fixes his fear of the dragon in the story by leaping from the pages into another part of the story where the dragon no longer exists. The main character also becomes a giant in the story which makes the other characters inferior and gives him some power over what happens in the story next.
Citations
Crum, S. (2006). Using picture books to teach literary techniques. Retrieved on July 6, 2014
from http://shutta.com/littechniqueswithPBs.pdf
DreamDictionary.org. (n.d.). Falling dreams. Retrieved from on July 6, 2014
http://www.dreamdictionary.org/common/falling-dreams/
Liu , X., Akrofi, A., & Janisch, C. (2012). Chinese children’s (re)storying of “foreign” wordless
picture books. The Dragon Lode, 31(1), 3-12. Retrieved on July 6, 2014 from
http://clrsig.org/pdfs/dragon lode 2013 article two.pdf
Myths-dreams-symbols. (n.d.). Retrieved on July 6, 2014 from
http://www.mythsdreamssymbols.com/dsmonster.html
Serafini, F. (2014). Reading the visual: an introduction to teaching mulitmodal literacy. (pp.
111-116). New York, NY : Teachers College Press.
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