Abstract
The House that Jack Built by multi-award winning author-illustrator, Gavin Bishop, is one of New Zealand’s most sophisticated picture books for children. Recently republished by Gecko Press in Te Reo Māori as well as English, it depicts the colonisation of New Zealand from 1798 to around 1845, and the beginning of the New Zealand Wars between Māori and Pākehā over land. Rather than simplistically depicting antitheses, the book emphasises mixed truths and a fusing of sides. This article considers the book’s interweaving of diverse cultures through its multi-layered story, which conflates several narratives, including those that are global and local, exotic and indigenous and, finally, those that are oral, written and visual. It examines the book’s deepest “truth,” which lies in its interaction with other texts, and the fact that the multi-literate reader must engage in the book’s playful intertextuality in order to access this larger “truth.” Drawing on ethnographic studies of historical, cross-cultural encounters, the article also explores Bishop’s appropriation and theatricalising of found texts, which he incorporates into his socio-political ideology, thus producing a work that forms an ironic counterbalance to more standard and sedimented versions of the past.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Image courtesy of Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand (Ref: D-020-073)
Image courtesy of Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand (Ref: PUBL-0037-24)
Image courtesy of Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand (Ref: PUBL-0037-16)
Image courtesy of Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand (Ref: MNZ-0876-1/4-F)
Image courtesy of National Library of Australia (Ref: nla.obj-12938#T2783 NK1272)
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Māori is the name of New Zealand’s indigenous peoples. Pākehā is the name given by Māori to European New Zealanders. Te Reo is the language of Māori. It is not customary in New Zealand to refer to “the Māori” or “the Pākehā,” but simply, and more generically, to “Māori” and “Pākehā”.
The front cloth is commonly used in theatres to hide scene changes, or the opening scene once the main curtain has gone up. It usually hangs well downstage. Sometimes action may be performed in front of it.
Bishop possibly appropriates the image of smoke from Hogarth’s engraving, The Times, a satirical comment on the war-like foreign policy of William Pitt and the corruption of the supportive, patriotic urban masses. (See Craske, 2000, p. 51 for further detail.) Bishop may also be recalling the disastrous fires that on different occasions destroyed some of London’s most famous theatres.
Bishop emphasises Jack’s superiority to the lower classes by referring to him on the title page as “Jack Bull Esq,” a title developing from the term “squire” (an attendant to a knight) and denoting respect.
References
Abrams, M.H. (1985). A Glossary of Literary Terms, 6th ed. Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Balme, Christopher B. (2007). Pacific Performances: Theatricality and Cross-Cultural Encounters in the South Seas. New York: Palgrave.
Belich, James. (1991). Making Peoples: A History of the New Zealanders from Polynesian Settlement to the End of the Nineteenth Century. Auckland, New Zealand: Penguin Books.
Bishop, Gavin. (2000). Putting it Together. In Session Talk for 18th World Congress of Reading. Gavin Bishop: Picture Book Author and Illustrator. Accessed January 10, 2017 from https://archive.org/details/ERIC_ED447493.
Bishop, Gavin. (2012). The House that Jack Built. Wellington, New Zealand: Gecko Press.
Bishop, Gavin. (2016). About Me. Gavin Bishop: Picture Book Author and Illustrator. Accessed January 10, 2017 from http://www.gavinbishop.com/about.
Bradford, Clare. (2007). Unsettling Narratives: Post-Colonial Readings of Children’s Literature. Canada: Wilford Laurier University Press.
Cook, James. (1971). The Explorations of Captain James Cook in the Pacific as Told by Selections of His Own Journals 1768–1779. In Archibald Grenfell Price (Ed.), Seeking the Southern Continent, chapt. VIII. New York: Dover Publications.
Cotton, Penni, and Daly, Nicola. (2015). Cross-continental Readings of Visual Narratives: An Analysis of Six Books in the New Zealand Picture Book Collection. Bookbird A Journal of International Children’s Literature, 53(2), 36–44.
Craske, Matthew. (2000). William Hogarth. London: Tate Gallery.
Derby, Mark. (2011). Māori–Pākehā Relations—Whaling Stations—First Contact. Te Ara—The Encyclopedia of New Zealand. Accessed January 10, 2017 from http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/photograph/28552/phillip-tapsell-whaler.
Evans, Patrick. (2007). The Long Forgetting: Post-colonial Literary Culture in New Zealand. Christchurch, New Zealand: Canterbury University Press.
Fensome, Alex. (2014, November 27). Settler a Big-noter but Fearless in Battle. The Dominion Post, p. A6.
Holt, Jill. (2002). Postcolonial Pictures for Children: Gavin Bishop and the Folktale. Papers: Explorations in Children’s Literature, 12(2), 14–25.
Hutcheon, Linda. (1985). A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms. London: Methuen.
McGillis, Roderick (Ed.). (2000). Voices of the Other: Children’s Literature and the Postcolonial Context. New York and London: Routledge.
Michaels, Wendy, and Walsh, Maureen. (1990). Up and Away: Using Picture Books. Australia: Oxford University Press.
Nodelman, Perry. (1990). Words About Pictures: The Narrative Art of Children’s Picture Books. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.
Orbell, Margaret. (2007). The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Māori Myth and Legend. Christchurch, New Zealand: Canterbury University Press.
Porter Abbott, H. (2015). The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sinclair, Keith (Ed.). (2001). The Oxford Illustrated History of New Zealand, 2nd ed. Auckland, New Zealand: Oxford University Press.
“Teachers’ Notes.” (n.d.) The House that Jack Built. Wellington, New Zealand: Gecko Press.
Unsworth, Len, and Wheeler, Janet. (2002, December 17). Re-valuing the Role of Images in Reviewing Picture Books. Literacy, 36(2), 68–74. Accessed November 2, 2017 from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9345.00189/pdf.
Webb, Jean. (2000). Text, Culture, and Postcolonial Children’s Literature: A Comparative Perspective. In Roderick McGillis (Ed.), Voices of the Other: Children′s Literature and the Postcolonial Context (pp. 71–88). New York and London: Routledge.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Vivien J. van Rij teaches literacy and children’s literature in the School of Education, Victoria University of Wellington. Her doctoral thesis was on Maurice Gee’s novels for children, and she has published widely on these works and on the New Zealand publication School Journal. Further publications focus on the New Zealand novels of Margaret Mahy and Jack Lasenby.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
van Rij, V.J. Cultural and Textual Encounters in Gavin Bishop’s The House that Jack Built, a New Zealand Picture Book. Child Lit Educ 50, 481–507 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-017-9341-7
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-017-9341-7