#417 of 1001 · September 21, 2021

In the mood for a clever and thought-provoking character study? Voices in the Park by Anthony Browne just might hit the spot. The story’s distinctive structure depicts the events of a single afternoon in first-person narration from the utterly different perspectives of four characters, rendered in the illustrations as anthropomorphic apes. Charles and his mother leave their opulent home to walk their dog Victoria in the park. At the same time, Smudge and her father travel through their crowded urban neighborhood to bring their dog Albert to the very same park. The dogs immediately begin playing together, and the children soon find each other and spend an enjoyable afternoon together. Browne deliberately selects a nondescript slice of time in order to let his characters’ voices take center stage. The tone of his writing changes significantly with the shift from one narrator to the next. Charles’s patrician mother focuses on the trappings of wealth and status, while Smudge’s father is drained and dejected from a fruitless job search. Timid, lonely Charles recedes in the face of his mother’s haughty indifference, while Smudge exudes merriment and good cheer. The style of the art morphs to represent each character’s attitude toward the world around them, accompanied by subtle extra-textual details such as the typeface and illustration borders. #voice #park #book #books #childrensbooks #beautifulbook #beautifulbooks #beautifulbookcover #beautifulbookcovers #picturebook #picturebooks #picturebookillustration #picturebookillustrations #picturebookcover #picturebookart #classicchildrensbooks #childrensbookillustration #childrensliterature #illustration #kidlit #kidsbooks #bookworm #booklover #booklovers #bibliophile #bookstagram #bookstagrammer #bookstagrammers #instabook #instabooks