Statement of Concept as of 02/23/15

Western culture has a tendency to categorize emotions into positive and negative.  In researching child psychology and emotional impact, I stumbled across dozens of papers, spreadsheets, and multicolored diagrams segregating sad, angry, scared, happy and other emotional labels into categories of good or bad. Sad can be beautiful, and creepy can be mysterious and wonderful. Over the last century a lot of these "negative" experiences are disappearing from children's stories and, in many cases of what I consider to be a corporate vandalism of classical works of art, the stories are completely changed, removing the moral and the magic.

I am interested in subverting this trend and bringing back some of the lost “negative” elements in a series that is sad and peculiar with a simple nonsensical façade that turns into a complicated  personal message. My work is masquerading as a child's cartoon, but I am writing about the abandonment of youthful aspirations. I am incorporating emotionally heavy elements like sad endings, because a sad ending leaves someone wanting to change injustice, and appreciate the struggle of the meek. It is important that children hear these because loss is a reality children can and do handle all the time, and empathy is a virtue that should be fostered.