Promotional Information

Open this wordless book and Zoom- from a farm to a ship to a city street to a desert island. But if you think you know where you are, guess again. Mysterious landscape of pictures within pictures, nothing is ever as it seems. You won't believe your eyes.

About the Author

Istvan Banyai is a commercial illustrator and animator as well as the author/illustrator of Zoom (Viking and Puffin) and REM (Viking). He lives in New York City.

Reviews

"This book has the fascinating appeal of such works of visual trickery as the Waldo and Magic Eye books."—Kirkus Reviews

"Ingenious."—The Horn Book

"Readers are in for a perpetually surprising-and even philosophical-adventure."—Publishers Weekly, starred review

This provocative wordless volume can be ``read'' either from front to back or even from back to front. Either way, it's a startling experience. Its illustrations ``zoom'' out, as though a viewer has rapidly backed away from each. For example, the first painting, of a jagged-edged red shape, turns out to be a detail of a rooster's comb; as the pages turn, the bird diminishes in importance, until the barn where he stands is shown to be a toy on a magazine's cover. That magazine dangles from the hand of a dozing boy, who himself becomes but a smudge on an advertising billboard. These shifts in perspective repeat until the book abandons earth altogether. The last image is a tiny white sphere-our planet-against a night sky. The bold color and level of detail in Banyai's cartoons recall ``Prince Valiant'' or another of the ``realistic'' Sunday comics. If the concept is not wholly new, the execution is superior. Readers are in for a perpetually surprising-and even philosophical-adventure. All ages. (Mar.)

"Readers are in for a perpetually surprising-and even philosophical-adventure,"--Publisher's Weekly, starred review

"This book has the fascinating appeal of such works of visual trickery as the Waldo and Magic Eye books."-Kirkus Reviews