Mirror

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One of these is usually the woman’s wedding scarf, the colours and design of which signify the tribe she is part of. The book is a great tool for striking up conversations with your child about poverty and wealth, simplicity and technology, rural and urban settings. They care for each other, they need to belong, to be loved by their loved ones and be a part of their community. I appreciate how the author/illustrator highlights the desire to know and connect with the rest of the world in both cultures. The girls packed their donkeys high with grass bundles and we made our way back to Idlerson village: (there hardly being a tree to be seen in all this distance) the girls walking this time though occasionally taking a ride on our mule.

I love learning about other cultures and this is a unique way to show that while both cultures are different, they still partake in the same things. We arrived back about 3pm: it had taken twelve hours of work for the girls to collect a supply of grasses for fuel. After Boutaghrar, it took a different road and we passed some fascinating villages … Tabrhan, Hadida and Olar. The Americans are all in very different clothes while the Arabians dress in different head coverings of similar fabrics.The modality of the illustrations are pretty low, but in a great way that adds uniqueness and character to the pictures. There is a lot of communication between me and my British editor and designer, and as with this book, its usual for them to question various details and see ways in which I can communicate my ideas more effectively.

The final Sydney traffic scene shows an area close to my home (Tiger country) and is much influenced by the actual and wonderful craziness that went with our local team, Tigers, being a player (about four years ago) in the Grand Final Football match. Jeannie Baker is the author and illustrator of a number of children's picture books, including the award-winning Where the Forest Meets the Sea. A two-in-one picture book that comprises two stories designed to be read simultaneously - one from the left, the other from the right. The gathering of people at the souks made me conscious of just how multicultural the populations here are. It is usual for parents and great grandparents to live together as a family here, so the whole extended family eat breakfast together.We see that in the context of strikingly different lifestyles, remotely different countries, landscapes, differences of clothing and all, the families are essentially the same. So I began to plan a second trip, to linger for a longer while in the valleys and Berber villages of the foothills of the lower Atlas Mtns and learn more of the way of life here … and to evolve the story for the project that became ‘Mirror’.

The book follows two boys, (the boy on the left lives in Sydney Australia and the one on the right lives in Morocco) as they go about their day. As the viewer looks in the mirror at their own reflection, they might contemplate what does a stranger grasp when they see this face? In the meantime, their dining table is an old door, still complete with door knob and latch, and father’s seat is a paint tin.While the author does share that she initially constructed 3D collages for the pages, their 2-dimensional rendering still holds a tactile quality. I had expected to be working alongside the girls but it was now obvious that was not what they expected at all. The book, Mirror, by Jeannie Baker is very unique, there are two sides to the book that mirror each other. It’s the hottest day so far and its very hard work pedaling up and down the mountain road of tiny stones. I would like to see more books like this, turning the two pages at once was an interesting way to read a story.