Child Friendly
The Pigeon Finds A Hot Dog!
By Mo Willems
Published by Hyperion Books for Children
What can an art student learn from this book?
Straightforward - The artwork for this book is very direct – simplified line work made with a child friendly drawing medium such as a pencil crayon. The colors and environments are also simplified. Flat pastel colors with no background detail or artistic flourishes. Still, as evidenced by the great success of this book series, children like the uncomplicated drawing style. Perhaps because it reflects the way they like to draw?
Dialogue - The writing is also very straight forward. But the writer squeezes every ounce of storytelling, emotion, and meaning from the conversational styled dialogue. This unadulterated approach to storytelling feels both fresh and refreshing.
Gesture Drawing - The simplicity of the book’s art is more than made up for with powerful character drawing. Emotion, personality, and actions are clearly projected through the subtle but emphatic gesture drawing. The body language is both exaggerated and carefully nuanced. Drawing is often under appreciated and substituted with a complexity of medium and style. But painting and style are superficial substitutes on their own – good drawing goes a long, long way.
Character Foil — The specific attitudes and personalities shown by the characters (and how they interact and talk to each other) is reminiscent of what you might see in a situational comedy such as Seinfeld or Abbot and Costello. This comedic foil approach is easy to follow, has great pacing, and builds up the humor and drama of the story.
Funny Bone - If you are fortunate enough to be gifted with humor, lean on it. Often artists repress their sense of humor and try to replace it with sentiment to make it feel more substantive. Maybe they are fearful of getting cancelled by something they say? However, humor is a powerful medium and the funny character interactions and comedic moments are what make this book memorable.
Scaling text - The contrasting size and scaling of text is particularly noticeable here. Some dialogue is made large for effect, while other lines of text are set very small in comparison. This creates a dynamic and exciting interplay of words and story. It is noteworthy how much emotional punch hand lettering can have when used to emphasis the drama of the story beats.