Bailey’s Beach Adventure is a children’s picture book written and illustrated by Shantih Duvel. The story is about a child aged character, Bailey, who goes for a walk along the beach one day and discovers a beautiful shell. Bailey sees the shell and is compelled to pick it up and admire it. Before Bailey has the opportunity to touch the shell it shouts STOP and proceeds to explain consent to Bailey.
The purpose of this book is to create a tool which can help young children understand the importance of consent. It relates to both their right to give consent before being touched by others, and to know that it is important to gain consent from someone they want to touch.
The goals of Bailey’s Beach Adventure are
– Communicate consent in a child friendly way
– Create a character that is non gender conforming, as to not perpetuate any harmful stereotypes
– Create illustrations that are child friendly, bright, interesting and playful
THE ILLUSTRATIONS
One of the primary objectives of this project was to create a story that is neutral to genders and stereotypes. To do this I used gender neutral colours, such as green and yellow for the clothing, and language through the use of ‘they’ and ‘their’ for the pronouns. I have created a character that is non gender conforming based on the fact that it is not human and has an androgynous name.
The illustrations have added a visual element to the language of the story that will help children connect to the message. The combination of the words and the illustration paint a well resolved and wholesome story for parents to read to their children.
Below are time-lapse videos of the illustration process.
silience design studio 