And although I don’t believe that Browne set out with the intent to be racist, or purposefully equate people of colour with his simian protagonists, there are elements in both Voices in the Park and Willy the Wimp’s illustrations which I see as problematic. My problem is this there has been a very long history in the West of associating people of colour with apes, gorillas, and other simians, which goes back beyond Darwin’s Origin of the Species, in order to dehumanise, and legitimise the oppression of black people by white people. What disturbed me about the book, however, was its use of anthropomorphised gorillas and what could be seen as ‘passive ideology’ – the unintended and unexamined values and assumptions which can pervade a text. The mother is shown to be middle-class, well-dressed, and uptight, while her son is repressed and miserable, whereas the father is working-class, unemployed, but more relaxed in his supervision, while his daughter has fun and cheers everyone up. The ‘overt’ or ‘surface’ ideology of the book – the social, political or moral values clearly shown by the author/illustrator – seems to be about class. For those who don’t know, this is a picturebook which looks at a visit to the park from four different perspectives a mother and her son, and a father and his daughter, and these central characters are all anthropomorphised gorillas/simians. Those readers who studied the Open University’s ‘EA300 Children’s Literature’ module will remember looking closely at Anthony Browne’s 1998 picturebook Voices in the Park.

Voices in the Park by Anthony Browne