![]() When the author’s words combine with the illustrator’s image-making, the picture book joins the visual storytelling techniques used in film and comic books, and the language structures of poetry. As a written medium it has more in common with compressed poetry than the expansive novel. THE PICTURE BOOK is a precise form of communication. All the youthful emotions from that time are embodied in Wild’s eponymous character: awareness of difference, fear of rejection, suicidal thoughts and determination to be one’s self, fully and without compromise. While reading it, I was reminded of my own struggles as a gay teenager, coming out to a traditional Greek family. The two seemingly unrelated impressions account for why I see Vampyre as a coming out story. Second was Shakespeare’s ‘Sonnet 29’, a tortured soliloquy in which the poet bemoans being an outcast and finds inspiration in a (possibly) male muse. ![]() Two things came to mind when I read the book.įirst, the Village People song ‘Go West’, later covered by another gay pop band Pet Shop Boys in a rousing rendition to freedom and liberation. Going against the wishes of an overbearing father, he plans to escape a hellish existence and rise to the surface, visually depicted as an unspoiled forest. Love and acceptance are his preferred states. He is a sensitive soul, drawn to gentler ways. They are a family of vampires, feared and shunned predators who feed on blood and, as we learn, the youthful protagonist wants out. ![]() Written in pared-back free verse, the story is about an adolescent who lives with his mother, father and six siblings in a vast underground network of ruins, teetering on the brink of an abyss. The journey is fraught and the end remains ambiguous, paradoxical. Chief among these is the individual striving for personal salvation. Echoing the image and writing style, the story pivots on a complex exchange of ideas. ![]() PUBLISHED IN 2011, Margaret Wild’s picture book Vampyre is a hallucinatory marriage of minimal text and symbolic imagery, rendered in a subdued colour palette. ![]()
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