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| "At the Zoo" Pencil. Copyright 2011 Jessica Boehman |
Showing posts with label kangaroo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kangaroo. Show all posts
Thursday, February 3, 2011
At the Zoo
I think it's pretty clear by now that I love the zoo. I've already mentioned that we live within a short walk of the Central Park Zoo and walk by at least once a week, often stopping in to go face-to-face with a penguin or to hang out with the sea lions. A couple weeks in Singapore this summer with my husband helped that love grow. There, you can get really close to a lot of the animals, feeding giraffes, rhinos, and even orangutans. They've got an amazing zoo and bird park, and the night safari is a lot of fun. This past year my brother and sis-in-law had their first child, and I spent a lot of time telling him about different animals and the sounds they make. I even made a song up about animals he could see in the backyard called, "What can you see when you're sitting in a tree?" I started to think about what it would be like to bring your own baby to the zoo, at that age when they are excited and curious and the whole world is new. I wanted a mom and baby to be walking through a whole mass of animals; what we see are the animals they've seen for the very first time. I picture this drawing hanging in a kid's room, where mothers can teach their kids about animals: Can you find the baby kangaroo? Where is the mother giraffe?
Saturday, January 8, 2011
The Kangaroo and the Elephant
The next two images for the Delacorte series were the Kangaroo with her kid playing the horns and the Elephant with Accordion. When I was a child, I had a powerful desire to ride in a kangaroo pouch. This was, undoubtedly, spurred by the movie "Dot and the Kangaroo", where one of the songs is called "Riding in the Pouch of a Red Kangaroo". This little kid seems so contented to be carried by his mother and joins in the music-making.
The Elephant drawing immediately followed the "Walking the Dog" drawing seen below, so it was at once familiar and unusual. Having just realized a very elephantine elephant, it seemed a bit strange to make one more human, playing the accordion. Both the animal and his instrument remind me of moving to northern Germany. My memories of this time are childlike, as we moved there five days after my tenth birthday, and are generally colored grey in my mind, likely due to the cool, cloudy weather that predominated there. Our first house was in a German neighborhood, not within the large American complexes where many of my friends lived. We lived a short walk away from a beautiful, sprawling forest park where we spent hours upon hours riding our bikes and pretending to be Robin Hood. We also were a short walk from the cobblestoned downtown area with its tiny shops. Of particular interest to a ten year-old child were the bakery that served these delicious, swirled meringue-type cookies, and the toystore. German toystores were a thing of wonder (even if we weren't very welcome there as part of the army of Americans in town). Filled with puzzles and detailed plastic figures and trains and stuffed animals, we spent many hours gazing, wishing and making Christmas lists. Since we arrived near Thanksgiving, I knew I had a good chance of getting my favorite toy in the shop for Christmas. It was a blue baby elephant stuffed toy, whose fur was so soft and cuddly. I fell in love with him and couldn't bear the thought of a month of waiting to see if he would be mine. On Christmas morning, when I found him waiting for me under the tree, I was the happiest a child could have been on that day. It's still one of my all-time favorite gifts. The accordion also reminds me of Germany, and not for stereotypical reasons. After we had moved to our second house, there was this old German man who would come door-to-door with his accordion. He would play without ringing the bell until we answered the door. When offered money, he would always decline, asking instead for a Coke. I always wanted to write to the Coca-Cola company with this idea for a commercial. So as it is, that elephant with accordion must have been made just for me. That's how I see him, in any case.
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The Elephant drawing immediately followed the "Walking the Dog" drawing seen below, so it was at once familiar and unusual. Having just realized a very elephantine elephant, it seemed a bit strange to make one more human, playing the accordion. Both the animal and his instrument remind me of moving to northern Germany. My memories of this time are childlike, as we moved there five days after my tenth birthday, and are generally colored grey in my mind, likely due to the cool, cloudy weather that predominated there. Our first house was in a German neighborhood, not within the large American complexes where many of my friends lived. We lived a short walk away from a beautiful, sprawling forest park where we spent hours upon hours riding our bikes and pretending to be Robin Hood. We also were a short walk from the cobblestoned downtown area with its tiny shops. Of particular interest to a ten year-old child were the bakery that served these delicious, swirled meringue-type cookies, and the toystore. German toystores were a thing of wonder (even if we weren't very welcome there as part of the army of Americans in town). Filled with puzzles and detailed plastic figures and trains and stuffed animals, we spent many hours gazing, wishing and making Christmas lists. Since we arrived near Thanksgiving, I knew I had a good chance of getting my favorite toy in the shop for Christmas. It was a blue baby elephant stuffed toy, whose fur was so soft and cuddly. I fell in love with him and couldn't bear the thought of a month of waiting to see if he would be mine. On Christmas morning, when I found him waiting for me under the tree, I was the happiest a child could have been on that day. It's still one of my all-time favorite gifts. The accordion also reminds me of Germany, and not for stereotypical reasons. After we had moved to our second house, there was this old German man who would come door-to-door with his accordion. He would play without ringing the bell until we answered the door. When offered money, he would always decline, asking instead for a Coke. I always wanted to write to the Coca-Cola company with this idea for a commercial. So as it is, that elephant with accordion must have been made just for me. That's how I see him, in any case.
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| "Elephant with Accordion" Pencil. Copyright 2011 Jessica Boehman |
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