Introducing: Opposites!
It is titled The Foot Book, but a more appropriate name would The Opposite Book. Foot is much less difficult for a beginner reader than opposite, however, so the world of opposites is situated through the mechanics of feet. The opening page introduces this concept. The second page quickly expands the concept by introducing the structural framework that will be carried forth throughout the text with imagery combining text and illustrations:
“Feet in the morning
Feet at night.”
Enlarging the Concept of Opposites
For the most part, the oppositional structure is conveyed through the simplest of binary choices: small/big, wet/dry, high/low, etc. About halfway through a startling example of visual imagery creates an equally startling leap in the complexity of how opposites work. The text says “Here comes clown feet” and it is situated below a page-high image of a circus clown. Two pages lager the oppositional figure is revealed: “Here come pig feet.” Whilst clowns and pigs have no immediately obvious binary aspects, they are opposites in the sense of representing different species, different heights, different widths, etc.
Metaphor
The driving metaphor of the book in which feet situated within the framework of opposition is made clearest in a single work of imagery spread across two pages. The illustration is of various different creatures walking on the sidewalk at the of a street while the text clarifies the larger meaning of the “foot” book:
“In the house
And on the street,
How many, many
Feet you meet.”
More
The extent of how opposites can work to a degree that is not always completely binary antagonist is supplied through the simple use of the word “more.” The insertion of “more” into the text near the end acts as text identifier of the visual imagery accompanying it in the illustrations. It starts out with just a simple repetition on one side of the two-page illustration:
“More and more feet”
Before moving on to take over textually as well as visually across the entirety of another two-page spread:
“Here come
More and more…....and more feet!”
The visuals accompanying the text on this particular illustration represent the widest gamut yet of the potential for opposites to be merely different from each other than binaries representing an absolute antagonistic relationship.
