My boss is worried that my art will give little kids nightmares. Below is an illustration that might go into the textbook I'm making. Last year, I was asked to author a textbook on philosophy for kids, and now that I've gotten other projects out of the way, I can finally focus on it. This, of course, means approaching the subject in a way that kids will find interesting, i.e., I can't just give them a boring chronological list of talking heads accompanied by a survey of each talking head's major ideas. Instead, I have to approach philosophy from the angle of interesting questions like, "Does the food in your fridge start dancing when you close the door?" or "How do you know your parents aren't robots?" or "Your little brother says he knows there's a monster under his bed. Do you believe him?"
Hence the following pic:
Yes, you got me: "Peter, come out and play" is indeed an adult joke that's meant to slip under kids' radar. Disney does this all the time.
I guess if the monster had beer bottles dangling and clanging from his claws while he called would be too obvious.
ReplyDeleteI used to give special lectures to 6th graders when I lived in Montana on how the Egyptians 'made' mummies. The teachers made them write thank you notes to me after and the thing I heard over and over was "It was really gross but I liked it." Kids love gross and scary. :)
ReplyDeleteRuth,
ReplyDeleteI completely agree. Hence the popularity of the Harry Potter books, with their frequent mention of Dung Bombs and troll bogeys (i.e., boogers). And scary stuff.