Can You See What I See? Big Book
of Search-and-Find Fun. By Walter Wick. Cartwheel Books/Scholastic. $12.99.
Stampy’s Lovely Book. By
Joseph Garrett. Random House. $9.99.
It helps to know what is in
these books before opening them. If you do know, you will enjoy the contents;
if not, you may be puzzled or could find the material off-putting. Actually,
though, being puzzled may not be a problem when it comes to Can You See What I See? Big Book of
Search-and-Find Fun, since puzzling is what Walter Wick is all about: he
creates fascinating photographic collages in which common objects are seen in
unexpected sizes, from unexpected angles, and in unexpected surroundings, making
them very difficult to spot among all the other objects on the page. Then Wick
asks young readers (or adults, who can enjoy these visual puzzles just as much
as kids can) to find specific things that are hidden in plain sight. This is an
enjoyable game, a kind of modern and visual update of Edgar Allan Poe’s famous
detective story, “The Purloined Letter,” in which the missing missive turns out
to be hidden right where anyone could see it – by being willing to look in a
place so obvious that it is easy to overlook. In the case of Wick’s Big Book of Search-and-Find Fun, the
pages are taken from the nine previous books in the series called Can You See What I See? Those books’
covers are shown at the end of this one, so if you particularly enjoy pages in Big Book of Search-and-Find Fun that
come from, say, Treasure Ship or On a Scary, Scary Night, you can get the
original books and find additional, similar displays. The nice thing about Big Book of Search-and-Find Fun is its considerable
variety: Wick has applied his photographic and layout expertise to many kinds
of objects over the years, and this book lets readers see and search for a
generous sample of his not-really-hidden items. Indeed, Big Book of Search-and-Find Fun goes beyond reaching out to Wick’s
existing fans through its diversity of images: kids who have never tried to,
say, look at a card table and find four horses, a red heart and a bowling pin,
or examine a layout of parts for building a robot and locate a mouse, a magnet
and the number 12, will quickly be pulled into Wick’s worlds and – if they do
not get too frustrated in their searches – want to spend more time in them. What
is more, the visual attractiveness of all Wick’s creations is so strong that
the pages of Big Book of Search-and-Find
Fun can be enjoyed just as pictures – before readers start their quest for
specific elements within the layouts.
The world of Joseph
Garrett’s Stampy Cat is an online one, specifically one on YouTube, and it is a
“lovely” world only because Garrett and the blocky, Minecraft-style cat say it
is. The same is true of Stampy’s Lovely
Book: there is nothing objectively lovely about the book, but it is taken
from what is called Stampy’s lovely world, so it gets the same adjective.
Unlike Wick’s book, Garrett’s is strictly for existing fans and highly unlikely
to attract new ones: there is not much to the book itself, and it draws heavily
on the assumption that young readers already know all about Stampy Cat. For
instance, pages about “my favorite friends” note that the “best lovely world
moment” for Ballistic Squid (who looks nothing at all like a squid) is “being
the Kraken in episode 124,” while the distinguishing features of Amy Lee 33 are
“bright pink hair and is usually seen holding a lovely jubbly love love petal.”
Stampy’s Lovely Book is partly
intended for fans who are considering making their own YouTube creations: one
page explains “my five-step process when making a Lovely World video,” and
actually contains some useful suggestions. However, the book is mostly for fans
who just cannot get enough of Stampy Cat and want to know “some completely
confidential secrets” such as “my Funland used to be a lake” and “There’s a
jungle biome in my world, as well as a mushroom biome. You just can’t see
them.” Stampy Cat is a popular Internet character – one among many – and some
pages of Stampy’s Lovely Book are
intended to bring the Internet experience into print. These include, for
example, “My Lovely Cake Maze” and a story called “Cow Calamity” that features
Stampy drawn in comic-strip style in an adventure involving cows and “my lunar
friends.” Existing fans may enjoy these off-the-Web elements as a change of
pace, but the book’s contents are unlikely to intrigue non-fans and make them
want to find Stampy in his primary presence online. Stampy’s Lovely Book gets a (+++) rating for its very narrow focus
and fan-only orientation: it is an adjunct to material in a different medium
and does not stand particularly well on its own. However, existing fans may
find it a nice souvenir of Stampy’s online world – fun for times when they
happen to be away from their electronic connections.
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