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The Rabbits By John Marsden Belonging

525 Words3 Pages

The Rabbits is a thought provoking picture book, written by John Marsden and illustrated by Shaun Tan. The book tells the story of Australia’s colonisation through colours, pictures and words. The book centres around two species, White Rabbits, who are invading a country, and Numbats, who are being invaded. The Rabbits book is based around the British invading Australia and the Indigenous' people's experiences and feelings about it. By replacing people with animals in the book, people are separated from what they think happened, and there is no cognitive bias. The book uses short sentences and different colour schemes to help the reader understand the theme of the book, and pictures to help the reader emphasize with the Numbats. The colour scheme of The Rabbits is very distinct and helps readers to understand the feelings of the Numbats. The book starts off with rather bright colours, showing that the invasion by the rabbits is not apparent, and that the numbats do not feel too bad about the rabbits yet. Later in the book, the colour scheme becomes darker, as if the numbats are shrouded in darkness, and the pictures don’t seem as bright, showing that the invasion is now well on its way, and that the numbats are scared. …show more content…

The short sentences give the book an effective atmosphere and portray the story is way that is concise and straight-forward. The text shows that in the beginning the Numbats were curious about they Rabbits, if slightly wary. As the book goes on though, it talks about how more and more rabbits came, and how the Numbats fought back against them. The sentence "we lost the fights" is very effective in that it is short and blunt, hitting home with the reader and making them sympathetic towards the Numbats and angry towards the

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