Look at the illustrations and you’ll find bowler hats in trees and so on. We associate gorillas with ‘big, tough, strong’, therefore ‘big, tough, strong’ nature of humans which then stand for teachers, adults, big people, bullies. The animals still have an animalness about them even though they’re obviously meant to be humans.

The update is deliberately staged and artificial. We know as readers that we’re being played with as a reader. Metafiction is a type of fiction which draws attention to its status as a work of art. There’s the very working class Mr Smith (indicated by clothing, speech, home), and the wealthy status of Mrs Smith. The friendship between the children is blooming, but Browne highlights the difference in class between the two families. (There are a couple of characters but at first we see them from behind.) The seasons are different for different characters, even though it’s the same bench. Let’s take a close look at Browne’s illustrations. Anthony Browne from from the Teaching Books interview When they see an everyday object for the first time, it can be exciting and mysterious and new. I also believe children see through surrealist eyes: they are seeing the world for the first time.

I use surrealism a lot is because I was very affected by surrealist paintings when I was young. The word for this is ‘ defamiliarisation‘. In doing so, they help their audience to see objects we usually take for granted in a new way. Surrealists put disparate objects together. ‘Surreal’ means the viewer must contribute to derive meaning. Something in the work is ‘superimposed’ over the naïve reading. The word refers to art which makes use of paradoxes, riddles and allusions. But in relation to works of art, surreal means literally ‘over and above’, ‘more’. ‘ Surreal‘ in everyday English means ‘I didn’t understand it’. Like Belgian surrealist artist, Rene Magritte, Browne uses the same symbol over and over to convey meaning. The updated book contains four separate voices in first person and is far more surreal. Look closely and you’ll find minor elements that don’t quite fit the scene.

In the earlier title, postmodern elements are nascently evident. Twenty years later (in 1998), Browne decided to redo this book in Postmodern style. Have you ever wanted to go back and redo old work? A Walk In The Park is one of Anthony Browne’s earliest picture books - his second published after Through The Magic Mirror.

A Walk In The Park by Anthony Browne