OUIL601 - How global warming has effected wildlife.

- Animals and also plants that are suited to living in colder climates will need to move towards higher grounds and polewards, even with just a slight change in temperature.
-This has already been witnessed in places like the Alps, Australia and parts of Costa Rica
-Certain species of fish have been seen moving northwards from where they were originally found.
-A rise in sea levels of just 50cm could cause sea turtles to lose their nesting beaches, and also affect the sea turtle population, as ground temperature affects the gender of the eggs.
-A lot of migratory species have been affected by global warming, as they instinctively know when to migrate from the change in seasons, but as temperatures change this confuses them.
-This also applies to plants to sprout at certain times of year, they either appear at the wrong time and subsequently die out, or they don't appear at all.
-This lack of plantlife also affects hibernating species, as when the animal awakens, their is no food for them to eat, because the plantlife has sprouted at the wrong time or hasn't sprouted at all.
-Global warming also creates severe droughts, as the atmosphere sucks all the moisture from the ground, destroying habitats are water dwelling species and animals that rely on these sources of water to survive.

OUIL601 - Brooke Barker

Illustrator Brooke Barker has a tumblr blog called sadanimalfacts.tumblr.com where she literally just illustrates sad animal facts, they're so cute.

I found her whilst I was looking for some interesting wildlife facts to put in my story, I think this is the perfect balance between realistic and anthropomorphising an animal, by giving it it's own voice and opinions, it becomes easy to relate to, but also obviously still an animal, easy for to differentiate between fact and fiction for children. 

OUIL601 - I got a reply finally!

During my research I came across an organisation that works with young teens to try and inspire them to follow a career in wildlife conservation.
I emailed their contact details asking if they would like to take a look at my book after I finished, and they replied! yay!

OUIL601 - Target Audience

I finally decided that the target age for my audience would be, as well as the parents, ages 5-7.
One of my favourite publishing companies is Flying Eye Books, they have different categories when searching through their books, one of them being books for ages 5-7.
I had a little search through that section to try and find some inspiration and get a feel for the type of words used in these books.

The first one I came across was one of Ella Bailey's One Day on our Blue Planet series, this one was in the Antarctic.

The majority of the pages seem to be very image based and less text, which looks very nice, but it may be hard for me to fit all of the information and facts in, with the amount of pages that I want to limit myself to.

The next was Hilda and the Troll by Luke Pearson, which is part of a great series of books, done in a comic style rather than traditional story book format, which I think would be good for my story, to help condense the imagery down a little bit so the book doesn't end up being too long. 

One Night, Far From Here by Julia Wauters, uses both normal paper and printed acetate to give another dimension of storytelling to her book. I think this would work quite well with mine, maybe combined with the puzzle pages, to make the book extra special.

OUIL601 - Peer review and feedback session

Comment on the initial relationship between the Theme and the proposed Subject?

Strengths - Clear relationship between the two, good idea to narrows down to a specific age group to communicate the theme.

Suggestions - How will you maintain the educational theme, will the activities appear throughout the book?

Comment on the appropriateness, scope and ambition of the proposed outcomes in relation to the subject.

Strengths - Really appropriate, I like how you are planning to educate through the actual narrative of the story aswell, learning without them realising.

Suggestions - With the age group being 8-10 will their be more text than their would be in a book for a younger audience?

Comment on the visual investigation and development of idea in response to theme and subject?

Strengths - Great that you have started thumbnailing, carry on!

Suggestions - You could maybe include a random animal that pops up every so often in the corner of the page with a fun fact.

Comment on the choice of media/format/series etc. in relation to the outcomes.

Strengths - Really like your water-colour scenes and backdrops in your sketchbooks - this combined with more refined detailed characters would work really well.

Suggestions - Try and create one scene using the different techniques you've used in your sketchbook to see which works best with the composition.

Comment on the initial relationship between the Theme and the proposed Subject?

Strengths - Definite relationship between the practical theme and what you have produced, really good story telling so far!

Suggestions - Just make sure that it keeps an educational slant on the work. You could have a fun fact every few pages?

Comment on the appropriateness, scope and ambition of the proposed outcomes in relation to the subject.

Strengths - Very appropriate, it is targeted well to the age group. Ambitious, but good ambitious.

Suggestions - You could expand the target audience, your question says young children, so maybe make it 6-10 years.

Comment on the visual investigation and development of idea in response to theme and subject?

Strengths - The humour in your work is really good. It's subtle and works really well.

Suggestions - Keep at it with the planning of the story, the facts are the things that make it really interesting to me, it would be amazing to have them included. Maybe a fact file!

Comment on the choice of media/format/series etc. in relation to the outcomes.

Strengths - You've the size of your book which is good.

Suggestions - Do a test page to see that the approach that you are wanting to take is going to work.

General comment:

1 - I think the book should be 32 pages. I heard someone saying Teresa said that was the minimum size of a childrens book when it is published.
2 - Merch:
Fact File
3D snail/plush snail/snail badge/stickers
Flash cards/memory cards, match the fact to the animal.
3- I'm really bad at humour but you could reference daily life as an adult like what you did with the snail not having enough sleep, maybe that kind of thing.

OUIL601 - Planning out my storybook

So, I started planning out my book, just quick first sketches, mainly so I could get the story sorted out and written down, because I don't see the point in drawing things that look really pretty and nice before I even know what the story is.

After I decided on a list of wildlife animals I wanted to write about, I realised that the story was going to be extremely long if I did a page for each panel, so I decided I would do a kind of half and half format. Half comic and half story book. I'm still a bit unsure of how doing this in a comic style panel format will work and how readable it will be for my target audience, but we'll solve that problem when we get to it.

Obviously I'm not going to put every single image from my sketchbook up, but here are a couple:

OUIL601 - Animal facts

I'm thinking about incorporating some fun animal facts into my book, just scattering them throughout in a little thought bubble maybe, like a 'did you know' sort of thing, to add a bit more depth and information into the story.

Here's some interesting one's I found:

- A group of fox's is called a skulk

- Baby hedgehogs are called hoglets

- over the past 35 years magpie numbers in Britain and Ireland have quadrupled 

- There are more than 600 species of spider in Britain

- The rarest mammal in Britain is the Scottish Wildcat

- There are less than 10 million brown rats in the UK

- Guinea pigs sleep with both eyes open

- Cats taste sweet things

- Flies vomit up their own food then eat it again.

- Owls can't move their eyes because they are tubes and not eyeballs.

- Brown bats are only awake for 4 hours a day

- Bees grow hair on their eyes

- Bats have long distance relationships

- Squirells can't burp

- 1 cow can fart up to 200 litres of methane in a day

- Frogs can't close their eyes

- Foxes, live, work, eat and sleep alone

- Ant's don't sleep

- Moths have no stomachs

- Pigs can't see the sky

- Mice can sense sadness in other mice

- Butterflies taste everything they walk on

- Worms have 5 hearts

- Every year, thousands of new trees grow because squirells forget where they buried their nuts.