Gabriel Morrison 15 April 2013 Proposal for English 490 For my Honors Project in creative writing, I will produce

a work of illustrated fiction that will explore themes of aesthetics in visual art and the line between fantasy and reality through a childs consciousness. I will be writing the story of Tess, a girl living in early twentieth-century Paris. Her father being an employee at the Louvre, the narrative will focus on Tesss thoughts and experiences concerning the museums art and her eventual involvement in a fictional account of the Mona Lisas theft in 1911. The story will be told through both words and pictures, with an intended audience of readers aged eight to twelve. However, like most works of literature (childrens or not), it will be meant to be read and interpreted by readers of all ages. I am interested in investigating the meaning of art and its history in human society as well as delving into childhood imagination and discovery. I am particularly interested in exploring how both of these themes (art and imagination) combine to blur the lines between the fantastic and the real, the true and the false, and indeed whether such concepts are necessarily separate from or in opposition to one another. In this work I will also be exploring ekphrasis, looking at how the description of art in writing can become an art itself, and also how it can be used to communicate emotion, tone, metaphor, and narrative. These themes and concepts will be brought to life with illustrations which will interact with the text to create a cohesive narrative. Though the illustrations themselves will be crafted and evaluated in a separate independent study with a professor in the art department, they are meant to accompany the text in an integral way, functioning as another method of storytelling. But although the illustrations are intended to support the story, the main work in this project will be the writing, developing, and revising of

the text, which will run to approximately 40 pages. As part of my research for this project, I will be studying the work of various other writers in the fields of illustrated fiction and children's literature. Authors whose work I will be studying include: Brian Selznick Chris Van Allsburg Katherine Paterson William Steig Antoine de Saint-Exupry Emily Arnold McCully Maurice Sendak Ursula K. Le Guin J.M. Barrie L. Frank Baum Other resources will include critical works by Perry Nodelman and Bruno Bettelheim. Of those listed above, I feel I have been most inspired by the work of Brian Selznick. The portrayal of childlike wonder often alongside harsh reality in his books is both beautiful and poignant. Also, his ability to seamlessly weave a story through writing and illustrations with elegant simplicity is something I wish to emulate in my work. Of the critical works I will study, I believe Perry Nodelmans The Pleasures of Childrens Literature will be particularly helpful in analyzing childrens literature as a genre and understanding the audience I wish to write for. [Schedule for completion of steps goes here. To be drafted with adviser.]