Voices In The Park by: Anthony Browne

Voices In The Park

You are about to take a journey as you discover the magic within Voices in the Park. A technique known as a Voice Thread will help to unfold the layers of Alimacani's Book of the Month for January 2008.

What is a Voice Thread?
A Voice Thread is a strategy known as digital storytelling. It is an online media album that can hold essentially any type of media (images, documents and videos) and allows people to make comments in 5 different ways - using voice (with a microphone or telephone), text, audio file, or video (with a webcam) - and share them with anyone they wish. A Voice Thread allows group conversations to be collected and shared in one place, from anywhere in the world.

You will be able to interact with the Voice Thread at the bottom of this page. Before we explore the Voice Thread let's take a quick look at the mystical qualities of Voices in the Park by Anthony Browne.

At first glance the reader begins the journey with a mother taking her son and their dog to the park. Readers are quickly transported to a magical world through the use of wondrous illustrations. The characters are not simply a mother, son, and dog. The characters are depicted as chimpanzees. One might remember King Kong, another work by our author.

The story is separated into sections using four voices. The author cleverly denotes shifts in moods with each illustration combined with the use of colors that evoke a certain tone, mood, or feeling. The images reflect the inner thoughts of mankind which can move about like the wind.

The reader should look for clues such as the appearance of the red hat and how its shadow pauses the reader to visualize or emotes a feeling.

As you explore Voices in the Park you will quickly notice that a mere trip to the park can be anything but ordinary...the colors, images, and voices allow the reader to see this trip in various lights.

The Voice Thread below contains a few bits of commentary along with Wonderings and Noticings that I tagged to several pages throughout the course of the reading. Don't forget to ask Ms. Stalls and Wendi Troutman for additional strategies and insight. They conducted one of the breakout sessions during our professional development session from the Perry, Georgia participants. Their breakout session was based on the seminar pertaining to Voices in the Park. I have placed the PowerPoint from the breakout session on the Share Drive in the folder titled BOM. Review the PowerPoint prior to introducing the Book of the Month and Voice Thread to your class.

• Directions to activate the Voice Thread:
• If you see a small box outlined in yellow that says: Add a picture of yourself... then just click on the upper right (x) and the box will disappear
  
• Next Click on the arrow underneath the author's name to activate the Voice Thread.
• You may need to adjust the volume on your computer.
• You can choose to wait for the pages to change automatically or you can click on the arrows to the right or left of the center arrow. These arrows allow you to proceed forward at your own pace or revisit a previous page.

Now, let's explore the creativity that is woven into Voices in the Park as you activate the Voice Thread below!