By Gordon Lambie
According to author and illustrator April Blampied, the story of her first book, Po Plays Pretend, and the story of its creation, are both about learning to see things in new ways.
“I didn’t set out to make a book,” she said, explaining that the project began as an illustration project with her art concentration students at Alexander Galt Regional High School three years ago. “The idea was to take one object and see it as something else by looking at it from different perspectives.”
To get her students thinking creatively, Blampied took collection of toys from her kids’ room and challenged the students to use them as inspiration. Once the students had made their choices, there was just one small, yellow and pink plastic teapot sitting on her desk.
“What I did, basically, was just look at it from different angles and see what else it could be other than a teapot.”
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