Prince Pear, Pop-Up Book

For the first big school assignments we have to design a book based on our excursion to London or one of our other excursions.

Personally I focussed on something I noticed when vissiting London, mainly the fact that I saw a very large amount of obese and overweight people. Health has always been an interest to me, so I did a little bit of research trying to find out if I was just biased or that the UK really does have a larger rate of Obesity. And it turned out it hadn’t just been me. The UK comes in third with obesity and overweight rates in whole western Europe. With 67% of men and 57% of women either obese or overweight it is a serious problem in the UK.

So I decided to make a book about this issue. However doing some research I quickly found out that the most important time in a person’s life to improve lifestyle quality is not during adulthood, but during childhood. So it would be better to target my book at younger children.

And so I decided to write a modern fairy tale about personal responsibility, but mostly about how it is your own actions that shape you as a person. I have no interest of stigmatizing the overweight, so I shifted the target of the book away from the main character being fat. Rather it is about him overcoming his own fears and weakness as a person, and going on a grand adventure where he changes based on the hurdles he overcomes with his own strength.

Phase 1: Story and make-up

Although I have nothing interesting to show at the moment, my first step was to write the fairytale I’ll be using in this book. The story itself is too weird to just copy paste into this project, as the text would be too long, and it is weird to read as the text relies heavily on the printed pictures and interactive features of the book. (little doors that can be opened, half pages that change the picture etc.)

I will however post a summary here.

Prince Pear is a lazy prince who has no interest in growing into his responsibilities. Fed up with his son’s laziness the king bans his son until he marries the princes of the neighbouring country.
Prince Pear has no interest in fulfulling this task, until he meets the princes, upon meeting her he falls deeply in love with her and swears to marry her.
The princess however has no interest in the prince, and the queen does not want him to become the next king. So the queen thinks of a ploy to trick the prince in leaving.
She sends him on a quest to find a magical fairy ontop of a far away mountain.
Determined to marry the princess Prince Pear sets out to fullfill this quest. But on his way he has to overcome three harsh trials to reach the tip of te mountain.
He will need to cross the forest of growth. Which teaches him to put himself in the shoes of others and to be a more compassionate person.
He will need to cross the Maze of Mirrors. Which will confront him with his deepest uncertainties and will help him learn to overcome them with his own strength.
And finally he will need to beat the dragon that lives near the mountain top.
By defeating this dragon prince pear reaches the mountain top, only to learn the fairy does not exist and that he has been tricked. So he travels back to confront the queen, angry that he had been fooled to go on this quest to change himself.
When he returns however no one recognises him, and the prince quickly realizes that it was not a magic spell that changed him, but his own actions. It was with his own strength that he could become a strong, determined and healthy person.
The princess is enchanted by this new prince and they end up marrying.
Happy end.

It’s a little bit cliché as the story follows a classic fairytale format. However throughout the fairytale the theme of self improvement is underlined. Hopefully this will convert a positive message that might reach a few.

Phase 2: Sketching

Right now I am still at the Sketching phase. I’m looking for character designs and such.