Booklist (February 15, 2010 (Vol. 106, No. 12))
Grades K-3. Normally, M. C. Escher’s work is the province of eye-candy posters for college freshman, but this picture book, is a nifty homage. Hewing to the Escher method of turning perspective inside out, this invites viewers to follow young Mauk, whose master is building a grand palace. With text running along the bottom of the page, Mauk dashes up and down stairs and around corners, dodging painters dangling from ceilings and walls, until he notices that all sense of direction has become bafflingly unmoored. On the last page, it turns out that Mauk has simply turned the master’s drawing plans around a bit, and the narrative flips over to the top of the page and runs backward through the same set of visuals, this time with an entirely different meaning. Events can be a bit disorienting, but things even out by the end—which is the beginning—and presents another opportunity to spin back through the Möbius strip of the story. An undeniably impressive bit of optical trickery with an even neater narrative flip at the conclusion.
Grades K-3. Normally, M. C. Escher’s work is the province of eye-candy posters for college freshman, but this picture book, is a nifty homage. Hewing to the Escher method of turning perspective inside out, this invites viewers to follow young Mauk, whose master is building a grand palace. With text running along the bottom of the page, Mauk dashes up and down stairs and around corners, dodging painters dangling from ceilings and walls, until he notices that all sense of direction has become bafflingly unmoored. On the last page, it turns out that Mauk has simply turned the master’s drawing plans around a bit, and the narrative flips over to the top of the page and runs backward through the same set of visuals, this time with an entirely different meaning. Events can be a bit disorienting, but things even out by the end—which is the beginning—and presents another opportunity to spin back through the Möbius strip of the story. An undeniably impressive bit of optical trickery with an even neater narrative flip at the conclusion.
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