Charlie & Lola: But I do know ALL about chocolate

This booked helped to raise money for Comic Relief, therefore it has an educational message, similar to a lot of children’s books.

This is the type of book that can either be read to a young child (aged 3-5) or read by older children. It is written in the first person, from Charlie’s perspective:

I have this little sister Lola.

Therefore, the tone is very chatty and full of children’s colloquialisms and mannerisms. For example, Lola’s like for chocolate is over-emphasised when she says

“I really, extremely do like chocolate.”

And she makes other child-like mistakes such as saying “outsidey bits”, as though she has learnt the rule for turning a noun into an adjective (add ‘y’) and over-generalised it. Certain words (as I have shown above) appear in bold, in order to show that the emphasis should be transferred from the written to the spoken word. The text displays a very endearing older brother and younger sister relationship, with Lola trying to appear as worldly as Charlie by saying

“Oh yes I do know where chocolate comes from. The shops.”

This line is also reminiscent of a pantomime, which children can relate to, and are inclined to repeat.

The story is based around a conversation between the two children and as it progresses the text becomes increasingly educational, with Charlie explaining to Lola where chocolate comes from, and gently correcting her imaginative ideas. It goes into quite some detail about how cocoa is produced and then puts across the moral message through the language of Charlie -

“It is [a really hard job]. And sometimes the farmers don’t even get paid very much money for picking all those millions and catrillions of cocoa beans.”

Lola’s outrage, which presumably is meant to stimulate a similar reaction in the young reader/listener, at this injustice is displayed by the increase in font size, the capital letters and the boldness of her speech:

“Oh that is NOT very fair.”

The plot follows that of a typical children’s story, beginning with the ‘status quo’, then advancing to some sort of challenge, which is then over-come. In this story the reader is directly educated throughout this journey.

This was one of the first ‘modern’ picture books I looked at, and certainly the first to combine such a variety of media in the images. The first and last pages of the book have a fairly traditional composition, with the image taking up approximately two thirds of the page and appearing in a circular frame with a few lines of text directly beneath it. The children appear as primitive, line-drawn caricatures in modern clothing. The colours of their clothes are either sketched in or filled in with cut-outs from prints and the characters maintain the same clothes throughout the book, presumably so that they are easily identified by the reader.

After the first page, the pictures start to illustrate Lola’s imagination and the mixed media really comes into play with cut-out photographs of chocolate buttons, eggs and money floating above the heads of the two children alongside caricatures of chocolate cakes and chocolate shapes. This imagination comes to life even more as the reader follows the trail of sweets and turns the page to find the image of Lola’s chocolate tree and house fantasy.

The pictures take up the majority of space on the page in nearly all the images and the objects of greater relevance are on a slightly over-sized scale. The photographic cut-outs bring the story to life and are sometimes of objects that are directly referred to in the text, such as the cocoa beans, and this is again done for emphasis.

The images in this book really bring to life the message that it is trying to express. In so doing, they work effectively with the text. They help the child reader to identify with their pre-conception of what a ‘chocolate tree’ looks like and compare that to the cut-out photograph of a real cocoa tree. The aim to get children to ‘buy’ fair-trade food is further pushed at the back of the book with the last double page spread depicting a caricature image of Charlie & Lola standing in a supermarket, and the reader is invited to

Use the special fairtrade sticker sheet at the back of the book and fill the shelves with lots of
fairtrade things.

This is a very obvious example of reader interaction, and a fantastic marketing ploy!

Both the pictures and the text are very cleverly positioned. For instance, to give the book a traditional narrative appearance, the first page (there is no title page) clearly depicts Charlie and Lola and the text, also introducing the characters, appears directly below this. The text is almost as creative as the images, as it threads through the different forms of chocolate on pages two and three. This device of using the positioning of the text as a guide for the direction the reader should take is employed later on in the book when Charlie explains how cocoa is farmed. The steps of the process appear in an undulating pattern interspersed with white dots that ‘loop-the-loop’ and create a footpath around the different images of cocoa production. The fact that they are not simply photographs (the caricature farm workers are laid over the photographs) makes the picture more modern and easy for the children (who have probably come across Charlie and Lola before) to relate to.

Throughout the book, Charlie and Lola are depicted as the older brother educating the younger sister and the majority of the time Charlie is looking down on Lola, whereas she is looking up at him. This re-iterates the text which is mostly made up of Charlie imparting his knowledge to Lola. The text and the images work together throughout the book, but I think the pictures dominate, in that they dictate where the text is positioned. For instance, the text appears either side of a mountain of cocoa beans (with Lola at the top, and Charlie at the bottom – it’s unusual for Lola to look down on Charlie) and the positioning of the text emulates the shape of the image. On another page, the text is fitted into shelves in the kitchen, and is juxtaposed with jars of fair-trade honey and coffee so that the reader pays attention to these details. On this same page, text that appears on a drab, brown and realistic kitchen floor backdrop at the bottom of the page is flagged up by the cut-out photograph of a football, to prevent the text from being lost in the backdrop.

This is a very lively and enjoyable read. The book takes a message (buying fair-trade food) that may not at first glance appeal to a child and cleverly finds a point of reference (chocolate) for them. The message is effectively conveyed through the voices of these familiar characters. It is a great example of the educational value of a picture book. Additionally, the pages of this book could be used as a starting point for many, varied discussions and activities, from vocabulary improving exercises such as asking children to describe chocolate to creative exercises like drawing their own chocolate trees. I really enjoyed it, despite being an ‘old fuddy duddy with traditional ways’!

smashing!