If you don't have young children, you, like me, may never have seen Iggle Piggle or Upsy Daisy. They are two of the main characters in In the Night Garden, a children's show screened in 35 countries that has generated a LOT of money.
Surprisingly, Andrew Davenport, creator of the Night Garden empire and before that co-creator of Teletubbies, doesn't have any children himself. But he understands how to use the power of metaphor in his creations. In the Night Garden is about going to sleep, which a lot of young children don't like to do. Here's the explanation Davenport gave in an interview in The Guardian:
"Bedtime really commands a child's entire day. Very often children don't have a proper sense of time. They live with the idea that, at any moment, someone could just take them from what they are doing and send them to bed. It can be a difficult moment: being suddenly alone. So In the Night Garden makes a metaphorical explanation for sleep, which is one of the only things in a child's life it can't be accompanied on. That's why you have the image of Iggle Piggle alone on a boat at the start, floating on a dark swelling ocean that's a metaphor for sleep."
I used the power of metaphor in the animated series I created, Norman Normal, which unfortunately didn't conquer the world like In the Night Garden but did have a pretty good run of 56 episodes. Norman is a normal 13-year-old boy whose parents, sister, and even dog are all superheroes. He's the only normal one in the family. I think that's how a lot of kids feel--they have a sibling who is smarter, maybe another who is more athletic, and all the power resides in the parents, so the child feels like he doesn't really fit in. In the series it's Norman's normal approach to things that often saves the day, so he actually is the heroic one.
If you can find a metaphor that viewers or readers can relate to and that's fun as well, you're on to something good--and it works with adults as well as kids.
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