Analysis Of Gary Crew And Steven Woolman's 'The Water Tower'

Picture books have been around for a long time. They have been read by many generations as a source of pleasure reading and to tap into their imagination. In these books, the writers and illustrator include various language, narrative and visual conventions to appeal to the reader and make them read with a deeper analytical eye to find the intended meaning. While some picture books are simple and the meaning is straightforward others are more complex and metaphorical. An example of such a picture book is Gary Crew and Steven Woolman’s “The Water tower.” The water tower is a story of two friends (Spike and Bubba) who goes to the water tower for a swim and the unnatural events that then occurs. To gain a full understanding of this story you must …show more content…
The water tower is an alien structure in the town of Preston. “Nobody in Preston could remember when the water tower was built, or who had built it.” This sentence makes the readers doubt the text because the town should be young for no one to know when it was built and the illustration of the town does not match this description. There are picture of old people residing in the town and the building of the town does not look modern but old. Due to this contrast, the viewers then look at the water tower like a supernatural object that came to place and the residents are proselytized by this phenomenon, that they just remember the water tower being there all the time. The illustration now does justify this theory because they look normal while they are working or carrying out other activities (plate 2), but when they look at the water tower they look as if they are obsessed (plate …show more content…
The readers are given an insight into Spike and Bubba’s friendship at plate 1 where the reader are aware of Spike’s dominating personality and Bubba’s submissive nature through “Spike led the way, as usual ... Bubba puffed on behind.” Woolman’s drawing in plate 3 support this idea. On this plate Spike is seen on the top of the watertower and seems like he is looking down at Bubba and smirking. In contrast to this Bubba’s image is placed at the bottom left hand corner where he is looking up, anxious and troubled by the thought of climbing the watertower. The idea of peer pressure is evident in this pate (3) as well, because Spike is trying to persuade Bubba to climb the tower and he is leading the way. The readers can understand this because he seems boastful because he has now climbed the tower and he feel as if others are missing out, “suckers. He grinned”. We also know that he is dominate and he is pressuring Bubba because he is seen yelling: “hurry