SEEING IS BELIEVING

A slender but diverse gallery of line and color illusions, with bright, crisply printed graphics.

Following an introductory overview, Moore presents three or four examples for each of nine types of optical foolery. There are parallel lines that don’t look it, geometric shapes that only seem to be different sizes, illusory color changes, “persistence of vision” spots, and perspective switches such as the vase-or-faces image. His accompanying commentary verges on overexplanation, as readers are not only told with each example how to look or move and what they can expect to see, but are then provided with additional hints and explanations at the end. In companion title Think Outside the Box, he challenges viewers to match a key to one of a set of schematic tumblers, trace a maze without using a pencil, and other tricky eyes-only puzzles—though again the answers are at the back. Other volumes in the Brain Benders series newly available in this country, It’s Only Logical and Not So Ordinary, offer further mental exercises.

Visually appealing starter volumes for readers who take pleasure in giving their powers of perception and deduction a workout.