Browsers and budding neurologists alike will be dazzled, dizzied, and delighted.
A substantial gallery of optical puzzlers and deceivers, with notes on their creators and discoverers.
From the publisher of Al Seckel’s Great Book of Optical Illusions (2001), this worthy successor gathers over 150 photos, shapes, graphic patterns, and artistic effects—with plenty of overlap, particularly in types of effect, but scads of fresh examples. A standard but comprehensive array of color and line juxtapositions, apparent spirals, endless staircases, trick photos, and geometric patterns to which the eye (brain) adds ghostly effects is grouped into 33 types. It’s expanded with entries ranging from 3-D mosaics found in ancient Roman villas to trompe l’oeil paintings and sidewalk chalk drawings, anamorphic images, animal camouflage, face painting, and numerous demonstrations of pattern recognition. These last include illusory “faces” in buildings or natural objects and a block of text that is surprisingly readable even though all the letters except each word’s first and last ones are jumbled. Rüschemeyer’s accompanying notes are scanty and unsystematic, but he usually describes each effect, delves into its neurological cause (where understood), and recounts its sometimes-serendipitous discovery.
Browsers and budding neurologists alike will be dazzled, dizzied, and delighted. (Nonfiction. 8 & up)Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-77085-592-2
Page Count: 214
Publisher: Firefly
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2015
Cold indeed is the heart not made warm by this bubbly fairy-tale romance. Raised by a kindly forest troll, Christian knows little of the world beyond what he can see through his telescope, but gazing upon a nearby castle, he falls head over heels for Princess Marigold. What chance has he, though, as a (supposed) commoner? When at last he nerves himself to send her a message via carrier pigeon, she answers and the courtship is on—via “p-mail” at first, then, after he lands a job as a castle servant, face to face. Setting numerous fairy-tale conventions just a bit askew, Ferris (Of Sound Mind, 2001, etc.) surrounds her two smart, immensely likable teenagers, who are obviously made for each other, with rival suitors, hyperactive dogs, surprising allies, and strong adversaries. The most notable among the last is devious, domineering Queen Olympia, intent on forcing Marigold into marriage with a penniless, but noble, cipher. The author gets her commonsensical couple to “I Do” through brisk palace intrigue, life-threatening situations, riotous feasting, and general chaos; Queen Olympia gets suitable comeuppance, and the festivities are capped by the required revelation that Christian is actually heir to the throne of neighboring Zandelphia. Fans of Gail Carson Levine’s Princess Tales will be in familiar territory here, as well as seventh heaven. (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-15-216791-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2002
It’s the first night of the 1967 Six-Day War between Israel and Arab countries. Three-year-old Ibtisam, hunting frantically for a shoe, loses her family as they join the throng of anxious Palestinians fleeing Ramallah into Jordan. Desperate hours will elapse before the family is reunited. This beautifully written memoir of the author’s childhood on the Israeli-occupied West Bank unfolds against a harsh backdrop of war and cultural displacement. The family endures poverty, separations and frequent relocation. Yet life goes on, by turns surprising, funny, heartbreaking and rich with possibility. In an overcrowded Jordanian school-room housing refugees, Ibtisam discovers Alef, the first letter of the Arab alphabet, and a key unlocking the magical world of written words. Courageous and curious, but by no means always well-behaved, Ibtisam and her brothers find ways to assert their strong wills in defiance of the authorities that govern their lives. The injustices that rankle come at the hands of parents and teachers, not broader geopolitical realities. A compassionate, insightful family and cultural portrait. (map, historical note, bibliography) (Nonfiction. 10+)
Pub Date: May 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-374-35733-1
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Melanie Kroupa/Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2007
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