OFFER and DEMAND- a visual study of two favourite picture books.

I taught an enthusiastic group of Year 2 and 3 children recently. After reading them Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak and Boo! by Colin McNaughton, the children's enjoyment of the texts led into a lesson about the visuals of each book.

On close study of the images we discovered that each book showed the main character mostly through visual Offers with only one visual Demand in each book. Why was this so? we wondered.

To help consolidate the children's understanding of the concepts and terminology. I gave them pictures from magazines to look at in small groups and sort into Offer or Demand. Each group shared their discoveries and discussed their decision making with the whole class.

Some children were then given an outline of 'Preston', the main character of Boo! with a mask on, as illustrated in the story. They were asked to draw his eyes (Just dots) to show an Offer or Demand. Other children were asked to study the picture books more closely and type on the computers in a word processing program about when in the story the characters where shown in a Demand. Yet another group of children used an outline of 'Max' from Where the Wild Things Are to show both Offer and Demand by threading a strip of paper through his face to create movable eyes. I moved between the groups and spoke to children about the choices the illustrators had made and subsequently the choices they were making.

Finally, we decided that both stories were asking us to use our imaginations through both the written and visual texts. We decided that the illustrator used a Demand to entice the reader/viewer into the fantasy of the stories. The illustrators' choices worked, we really enjoyed these books!