picture book
author and illustrator
The New Tunnel
Aardvark likes adventures.
So when a mysterious new tunnel appears at the edge of their burrow,
Aardvark sets off on a very strange journey...
The New Tunnel is a collaborative picture book that enhances communication, creative and social development in a primary educational setting post-COVID-19 lockdown through a surreal retelling of its events, as Aardvark travels through a mysterious new tunnel physically exploring and encountering lockdown themes such as togetherness, conflict and loss.
By bridging the worlds of the child and the adult through the surreal to promote understanding of challenging themes, It explores narrative illustration as a communicator for abstract concepts through symbol, mark and colour by visually expressing characters’ different perspectives, or ‘voices’, making them accessible to a diverse, young audience.
By bridging the worlds of the child and the adult through the surreal to promote understanding of challenging themes, It explores narrative illustration as a communicator for abstract concepts through symbol, mark and colour by visually expressing characters’ different perspectives, or ‘voices’, making them accessible to a diverse, young audience.
A co-creative approach was developed using guided activities to stimulate their creative and emotive expression and generate a palette of motifs and ‘ideas’ based on themes surrounding lockdown. These were combined into a narrative which amplifies their collective and individual perspectives where the visual language of each spread, from landscapes to characters encountered as Aardvark comes across each theme, are manifestations of their own collective reflections on them.