Visual Journal Assignment No. 8

Due: 11/2/15

A book illustrator is an artist that creates images for a book that goes along with the text on the pages. For this visual journal assignment, you will create an illustration based on the following text from the book Coraline by Neil Gaiman.

Coraline discovered the door a little while after they moved into the house.

It was a very old house – it had an attic under the roof and a cellar under the ground and an overgrown garden with huge old trees in it.

Coraline's family didn't own all of the house, it was too big for that. Instead they owned part of it.

There were other people who lived in the old house.

In the flat above Coraline’s, under the roof, was a crazy old man with a big moustache. He told Coraline that he was training a mouse circus. He wouldn't let anyone see it.

"One day, little Caroline, when they are all ready, everyone in the whole world will see the wonders of my mouse circus. You ask me why you cannot see it now. Is that what you asked me?"

"No," said Coraline quietly, "I asked you not to call me Caroline. It's Coraline."

"The reason you cannot see the Mouse Circus," said the man upstairs, "is that the mice are not yet ready and rehearsed. Also, they refuse to play the songs I have written for them. All the songs I have written for the mice to play go oompah oompah. But the white mice will only play toodle oodle, like that. I am thinking of trying them on different types of cheese."

Coraline didn't think there really was a mouse circus. She thought the old man was probably making it up.

The day after they moved in, Coraline went exploring.

For your assignment, choose part of this excerpt to illustrate, being sure to give lots of details to let the viewer see what’s happening in the text in pictures.  Imagine it as a scene from a movie, showing the characters and what else would be in the scene.

For your paragraph, explain why you chose to illustrate what portion of the excerpt that you did, and if it was easy or difficult to “create” the scene on paper based on what you read.