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Posts tagged ‘Martin Handford’

Where’s Waldo??

Remember this guy? White and Red shirts, glasses with weird hat. I remember him as one that i really want to find. I always sat down hours and hours with a book called “Where’s Waldo.”  When i was a just a little kid, i would always followed my mom to the department store. As the shopping gets longer, my mom would stop by at the kids book store to let me read some of the book there. In the bookstore, i would always reached for “Where is Waldo”. This book allowed me to loose track on time, because i was so focused and got challenged on finding all the waldoes in big crowd group of peoples and excited situation.

So, who is waldo? and what is the book “Where’s Waldo”? Waldo is the main character of this book and he is 24 years old as me. British illustrator Martin Handford created this book in 1987.The name that we knew about this book is only used in published book in the United States and Canada. It  actual original name is “Where’s Wally?”, because in Korea, we called him Wally. “It is a series of children’s books that consist of a series of detailed double-page spread illustrations depicting dozens or more people doing a variety of amusing things at a given location.”  This book usually cost 1,2000 won in Korea currency, such as 12 dollars.

However,  where is Asian version of waldo or African version of Waldo? All the main character were Caucasian race. We could wonder that children might think that only Caucasian race travels around the world, but this might be too much worry. It doesn’t represent of inequality of race or challenge to the fixity of racial identity,  because children think that main character could be their race.  From the reading of Elizabeth Chin “Ethically Correct Dolls”, “Clarice, like a number of other girls I knew in Newhallville, does not appear to assume that just because her doll is whit she must treat her that way. When deciding to do her hair, she gives her very white, very blonde, and very blue-eyed doll a hair style that is worn by young black girls.”(368). And I agree with her, I never thought that Wally is only for white children,as view of Asian, he was in the book to be found by any kind of race children, And I thought that Wally was Asian.