Animals Final

For my final Animals, People project, I decided to address the role of anthropomorphism in children’s literature and learning materials. Animal characters are often personified to the point that their human-like attributes overwhelm their animal features and needs. As a result, children grow up to view animals as human-like, misinterpreting their actions and attributing human desires to their behavior.
I set about designing an “edutainment”-style book to teach kids about ocean reef life. The story revolves around cleaner shrimp, chosen because their cleaner stations act as a hub for reef activity.  Here are a few parameters for myself to avoid overly anthropomorphizing the creatures:
1. no names (animals will be referred to by their common names only)
2. no talking
3. no interactions that would not occur in nature
Here is the result:

I’m pretty satisfied with the overall look and feel of the text/images, though they definitely could use some refinement. But! I realized post-crit that while the late-1970’s academic look of the book might be appealing to me, it probably doesn’t strike a 10 year old as thrilling. Back to the drawing board, I guess.