Go on a crazy seek-and-find adventure in this new picture book from award-winning artist Bob Staake. Die-cuts on every page draw readers into each themed scene and invite them to find the items hidden within the elaborately detailed spreads. From underwater worlds, to haunted houses and tree-top towns, there are endless details for readers to search for and discover. This inventive picture book format will have kids hooked from the very first die-cut page all the way through to the end where a gate-fold finale challenges them to go back for yet another look and even more surprises.
Bob is best-known and widely celebrated for his picture books and this visual feast is some of his most exciting and creative work to date!
Staake ventures into "I Spy" territory with a set of big spreads teeming with tiny random objects, beaming children and silly cartoon figures, all rendered in a retro silkscreen style. Previews supplied through small die-cut circles on near-empty preceding pages give way to broad expanses of loud color and busy activity—linked to loose themes identified in suitably loud captions: "Weird and kooky THINGS THAT GO! Some go fast and some go slow! / Can you find the squawking crow?" Exclamation-strewn captions and a foldout list at the end invite viewers to try spotting specific items, but there's plenty of eye candy here to reward random browsing, too, as the scenes shift from city streets to a haunted house, a robot factory to a tree studded with suburban bungalows and so on. Children overwhelmed by the visual density of Where's Waldo? or the aforementioned I Spy albums will be drawn to these somewhat more open and visually groovy assemblages of images. (Picture book. 5-7)
JLPetes
Posted April 19, 2012
"Look! A Book!" written and illustrated by Bob Staake is full of holes--holes you can look into and through to find wonderful, surprising, delightful things such as a baby whale in a goldfish bowl. Each two-page spread is a fun scene built around a playful scenario, such as animals that escape from a museum or a town of tree houses or Aqua-Goofy Jubilee. Each scene offers hundreds of fun things to find. Where else will you find a baseball on a camel's hump or a gargoyle eating pizza or a monkey wearing just one sock? This book is beautiful to look at with appealing colors that are easy to look at for long periods of time. Bob Staake's illustrations are simply FUN! He uses a delightful combination of repeated digitally enhanced yet interesting shapes with artful scribbles, interesting patterns, and contrasts of large and very small. Look for detail. Look for whimsy. Look for pineapples! Charming children, intriguing beasts, and benign grown-ups also populate pages of this book. Each page is chock full of joyful surprises. On the Robots page a professional moose dressed in lab coat and proper bow tie oversees the quality of newly manufactured robots. A workman behind the moose offers an ice cream cone to a robot. Bob has included delights for older lookers, too. "Fenwick shoestrings--fit to be tied" is a sign on a building. One child wears a Richard Nixon Halloween mask. This book is fun for all. You should take a look. The book is dedicated to Hermann von Snellen, the creator of the Snellen Eye Chart to test your eye sight. "Look! A Book!" is great fun.
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Overview
Weird and kooky things that go!
Some go fast and some go slow!
Can you find the squawking crow?
Go on a crazy seek-and-find adventure in this new picture book from award-winning artist Bob Staake. Die-cuts on every page draw readers into each themed scene and invite them to find the items hidden within the elaborately detailed spreads. ...