A Comparison of Beatrix Potter Books.
For over a century, Beatrix Potter's art and her wonderful imagination have affected children and adults all over the world. There is hardly a person who does not know The Tale of Peter Rabbit. Starting with her first published book in 1900, Beatrix Potter went on to write thirty-two more books in her lifetime, most of which feature animals with human qualities. There are a great deal of similar features found among the Beatrix Potter books; for example, all four of the books I examined had problems to solve and each one contained a hint of subtle irony for even adults to enjoy. Although, the author did not give an in-depth description of her animal characters in her stories, she did choose to gift her readers with her beautiful water-colored paintings. These renderings have the strength to pull the reader into a world, which Potter saw in her mind's eye. Finally, Potter features anthropomorphism throughout her stories as well, which plays an important part in her style to be taken in by her readers. The books that I have examined are The Tailor of Gloucester, The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck, The Tale of Tom Kitten and The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies.
General Similarities.
The humans featured in The Tailor of Gloucester, The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck and The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies all have similar roles. They all seem to cause the problems for the animals giving her books a consistency for her fans to cling to. For instance, in The Tailor of Gloucester, the tailor proves that he, himself, is a poor money manager. The tailor entrusts his cat Simpkin with money to buy thread. Simpkin soon returns with the thread but hides the twist (thread) in the teapot and it mysteriously goes missing; this puts the tailor in a precarious position because he has no way to sew the mayor an outfit, which would make him a good living. The tailor should have never asked the cat to go shopping for him, which creates a great predicament for the readers to think about.
