Speech On Stolen Girl By Trira Saffioti

Good morning/afternoon ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining me at the State Library of Queensland. It is an honour to be able to speak to all of you about the importance of visual literacy and how much time and effort actually goes into making picture books. Today, I will be talking about a picture book called ‘Stolen Girl' by Trina
Saffioti. It is a book about the period in history known as the ‘stolen generation' and it illustrates the story of an Aboriginal girl taken from her family and sent to a children's home. She sits down each night, dreams of her mother and the life they once shared. The visual elements found in this book are all very important, but the most significant ones are: colour, placement, juxtaposition and symbols.

It may not be that obvious, but colour has a huge effect. There have been many colours used but the main ones are: yellow, red, orange, green, blue, brown and black. When we look at colour psychology, these are all colours that represent happiness but when we read the words (point to words), we can infer that it is meant to be a sad page. The colours in this picture don't represent happiness, they are representing comfort towards the children. The colours are bright and are mixed together to create this effect. Also, different colours have been used to make other objects stand out. An example of this is that the children in the background stand out because the author has used a darker colour than the surrounding earth and the sun stands out because it is a brighter colour than the surrounding blue for the

As you can see here, the earth is juxtaposed with the sky. It is the red, orange, earthy colours in comparison to the light blue colours. The effect of using this in a picture is that it can make certain features stand out. In this picture the features are: the sun, the group of girls and clouds at the top of the picture. This brings me to my next point that uses juxtaposition to make it more effective. The illustrator and author have used symbols on this page in particular to create a deeper meaning than what you first interpret from the words on the page. One of the symbols on this page is the sun. This represents hope to the children. It is a sad setting, but the sun is shining through and lighting up the dark sky, and if we look closely at the picture, we can see that it is pushing the dark clouds away. The other symbol is the warm colours of the earth that are the main colours throughout the picture and they are also there to represent comfort to the children as they are in a sad