Emily Gravett Analysis

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XXXXXXX Xxxxxx SS SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS Emily Gravett is an author and illustrator of children’s picture books. Born in Brighton, England, she is currently a prominent figure in British children’s books, having won the Kate Greenaway Medal a total of three times. Upon reading her works, I have found that the author has a good way of employing not solely illustrations, but also literary devices such as plot, setting, characterization, etc. Due to the facts above, I believe that the works of Emily Gravett are a good choice to be used as teaching materials in an ‘English as a Second Language (ESL)’ classroom. This essay will attempt to justify the reasons for using the works of Gravett in an ESL classroom, and design a number of language …show more content…

One such method is by stimulating the imaginative faculties of the children. In just the three books Wolves, Spells, and Again!, Emily Gravett exposes readers to three different components from the realm of imagination. First of all, readers are presented with animals possessing human traits, or anthropomorphism, in Wolves. The protagonist rabbit walks on two legs, and even reads a book. Further on in the story, the rabbit and the wolf become friends and share a sandwich in the alternative ending, which should be something completely surprising. The child reader is then exposed to the out of the box thinking of Gravett, allowing his/her imagination to widen, having seen a new and unique perspective. On the other hand, young readers are exposed to magical incantations and hybrids of animals. These stimulate the imaginative faculty of child readers by presenting to them the world of magic, and at the same time allowing them to see new possibilities in the form of the animal hybrids. The book is also a good read because it introduces a myriad of animals, some of which more likely for children to be unfamiliar with, such as the newt. Again! takes readers into the realm of mystical beasts. This is because all the characters in the story are in fact dragons. Furthermore, the protagonist is a young dragon, who pesters his mother, also a dragon, to read a bedtime story about a dragon. By the dragons engaging in a familiar activity to child readers, there is in fact, a form of anthropomorphism, just like in Wolves. Gravett exposes children to anthropomorphism, magical spells, and mystical beasts. Thanks to these, the imaginative faculty of the young child reader will be stimulated, as they explore worlds different from their own, while being faced with the question of the similarity between the anthropomorphic non-human