CHENNAI: Our childhoods would be deemed incomplete without the stories of Hansel and Gretel, Cinderella and Goldilocks, among other famous characters and their predicaments. While we grew up listening to these fairytales, some of them can be modified to suit modern times. Attempting a twist with the fable of Goldilocks and the Three Bears is Ashiish V Patil with his book, GoldiBoy and the Three Apes: An Isspeshal Fairy Tale. It is a heartwarming tale about acceptance and inclusivity.
Ashiish brings to the table a sweet neurodivergent, autistic teenager who stumbles into the house of the three apes. The friendship displayed among the three apes and Goldiboy is a beautiful read. The vibrant colours on each page, thanks to the illustrations by Nikita Modi Biswas, make it even more appealing. Sensitively written, GoldiBOY and the Three Apes is a pleasure to read for children and adults.
Excerpts from an interview with the author and the illustrator follow.
Interview with Author Ashiish V Patil:
How did you centre on Goldilocks to be your inspiration for the book?
Picking something familiar and seeing it in a new light, discovering something about it that you hadn’t noticed before always makes it easier to accept possibly. And the Goldilocks narrative was right under our noses — the fact that she found things either too hot/ too cold/ too hard/ too soft was such a clear sign of sensory sensitivity… it lent itself beautifully for this interpretation. The rest then just fell into place automatically, to bring in more contemporary references, be it Bollywood and iPads or otherwise.
In a video titled ‘5 Ridiculous Reasons to NOT Buy GoldiBoy and the Three Apes’, your son Risshan mentions that you are autistic yourself, in addition to being an autistic dad. Have you integrated some of your own experiences into Goldiboy’s character arc?
Humour is a fab tool to cope with the world and its chaos. Yeah, I’m a late-diagnosed autistic myself. Something I also only recently discovered is that Risshan and I have more in common than I thought. We share more than our genes and jeans (given he’s now as tall as I am). We share several similar lived experiences, symptoms, and sensitivities. So many of these sounds, and smells have made their way into the book. The detailing is all me — it comes from my ability to hyper-focus and go from a drone view to a microscope very fast. So, the embellishing of each frame and the choice of certain elements is very conscious. From the autism infinity symbol to the book Papa Ape is reading (Temple Grandin’s Thinking in Pictures which is an autism bible of sorts), the podcast Mama Ape is listening to (Spectrumly Speaking Podcast which is one of the top few in the community), the artiste on Baby Ape’s playlist (Billie Eilish with her Tourette’s), the gluten-free pizza, the weighted blankets, Bappi Da, and of course, the bad jokes.
Why a children’s book when many choose to educate through visual and auditory platforms?
Ah, don’t we have enough screens in our and our kids’ lives already? I think there’s an amazing sensory experience that gets activated with books that no million-dollar VFX, sound design can ever replicate. The joy of flipping through pages, of reading a book to your child, acting out various characters — a book not just allows you, but mandates you to do that — vs an audio/ visual platform where you’re kind of spoon-fed all of these. Given that we wanted to introduce kids and adults early on to neurodiversity, I thought this is a great format.
Having said that it’s not an either/or. We could very well flip Goldiboy and the Three Apes as seamlessly into an animated series or other formats. We’ve already done some cool merchandise inspired by these fun characters and the theme. T-shirts, hoodies, sweatshirts, sippers.
Are you planning to write more adaptations of fairy tales and create a series around the same genre?
It’s definitely an opportunity to reintroduce, re-version the classics or for that matter extend the further adventures of Goldiboy and the Three Apes. Be it on a holiday, a trip to the mall, a day in school or just a regular day in our world celebrating differences, neurodivergence. Somewhere in there is probably a movie as well… I mean these are the characters we need to see reflected in mainstream media and entertainment which is totally missing right now. Invisible disabilities are particularly invisible in the media. It’s high time we fix that, no?
Interview with illustrator Nikita Modi Biswas:
Most frames do not lie within a traditional panel and seem to be painted on with a brush. What made you choose this style?
One thing I’ve realised about myself over the years is that I had an eye to notice perfection in imperfect things. And I had a particular liking for that. Raw styles and childlike art attract me more. I usually find incomplete paintings or illustrations more complete when they are in the process of being made versus when ‘done’.
The main inspiration for the style came to me after I met Risshan personally. He was full of life with a lot of music in him and warmth. The essence is him. You will even see a lot of pencil marks or rough unfinished strokes, and vibrant hues in the style. I created my background separately and the frames separately as everything was hand-drawn and painted with a brush. Then combined digitally. The style was more fun and a lot of love in the making.
Most of the pages have at least one autism infinity symbol present. What other easter eggs can readers expect?
The infinity bow I thought because the world of autism is another infinite world in itself. We know so little about it at the moment. It’s a world of infinite love, possibilities and more — so it’s there in a variety of ways — be it on Goldiboy’s t-shirt, in the way they hold hands, on the slides in the playground, as the butterflies.
Small nuances and details like the Apes’ home has a King Kong poster — which is such a beautiful love story of a human and another being that’s misunderstood. The iPad/ tablet shows a banana instead of an ‘Apple’ as its logo. The apes are based on the popular Bored Ape crypto/ NFTs which are so cool. The bike Goldiboy rides is an electric vehicle. Even the way we’ve seeded our own photos as creators is based on the style of the book. That’s also the joy of art, that each person perceives it differently and has his or her own interpretation. There are tonnes more and I am sure readers will be happy with the world that unravels with those easter eggs.
How did you picture GoldiBoy when you thought of him for the first time?
When Ashiish shared the story with me, frankly I knew very little about autism and ADHD. I kept asking him questions like a child and he would patiently answer each one. I had seen a few pictures of Risshan but had not met him until then. All I understood is that he’s very pure, not affected by this world of ours that’s always in such a rush. He lives each emotion to the fullest. These are faces without masks. I made a spontaneous sketch of Goldiboy from all that I grasped. It was very close to the final sketch. Because it was pure, innocent and from the heart. Goldiboy has an innocence which you see in his eyes, he has his fears, he is so fun, pure and has the most vibrant golden smile.
What was the process while colour-blocking your frames? Was there a set of colours you chose for each emotion?
Colours are choices of more of my inner voices. The main intention for me was to depict the emotions more visually and I played along. Just like autism is like the burst of confetti in an otherwise grey, world… Ashiish wanted me to play with neons and it was fun. To reflect the same brightness, positivity, happiness, diversity and colour. The choice of colours was also spontaneous. I knew the big sofa would be yellow, the weighted blanket would be soft purple. The Apes’ house would be very lively with a lot of natural sunlight coming in, a lot of green and a wooden feel to it. Like a tree house that’s been funked up. With a lot of love.
I have always seen Risshan wearing bright colourful fun t-shirts which I absolutely love so I believe the book is all about him!