The body is a zoo.
Inside each of us, animals are fighting for our attention, wanting different things, behaving unexpectedly.
How do we keep them under control?
What happens when we can't?
In this exclusive new book, illustrator Charlotte Ager reflects on the messy emotions of life, challenging the myth that feelings are something that can or should be overcome.
Serious and funny, familiar and strange, Zoo reveals through beautiful words and images how someone can be pulled all over the place at the same time - by lions, snakes, rabbits, rats and more.
Words on Zoo
"I’ve always drawn and the more I’ve done it the more it’s somehow become truer to how I feel and think about things. I used to write a lot of stories as a child, but I think school knocked it out of me a bit. I was always pulled up on my spelling and that just gets boring. This might be why drawing felt more natural; no-one can really tell you you’ve done something wrong in a drawing, if they do it’s funny rather than a mistake.
"Zoo is an idea that had been brewing in my sketchbooks without me realising which I feel are often the strongest ideas, they come to you over time. I kept finding myself using different animals as placeholders for certain emotions and when I started filling out how they might occur in a book the idea kept coming, so it felt very natural to work on.
"It’s about each of our eclectic collections of animals, who pull us in all different directions, demanding our attention with varying needs. About how we try to balance those and all the frustration, joy and confusion that comes with that.
"Each animal doesn’t represent one element, the characteristics of each change and demand different things. I felt this was important because we’re sometimes sold the myth that our relationship with feelings is some sort of challenge, or task to complete.
"If we can do certain things, strive to be our ‘best selves’, then we can keep everything permanently balanced but of course that’s never the case. And though that can be scary it also allows us to experience a plethora of an emotional world which is pretty wonderful. There’s humour, joy and love in failure.
"Writing, drawing and telling stories are important because they give an insight into the way people really see the world. You’re let into someone’s inner life and the way their brain works which is the bit that makes being a human so exciting."
Q&A
What is your favourite book?
The God of Small things by Arundhati Roy because it’s the only book I’ve just needed to reread multiple times and still makes my head buzz like it did when I first read it.
What is your favourite quote?
I’ve always loved in Jane Eyre when Mr Rochester asks Jane if she is happy with her drawings and she just replies: “Far from it. I imagine things I'm powerless to execute.”
- Charlotte Brontë
This feels very apt for my own relationship with drawing and describes that love-hate relationship with being creative perfectly to me.
What's your favourite word?
At the moment it’s Tender.
