Starred Review for Publishers Weekly (Thu Apr 28 00:00:00 CDT 2022)

This provocative wordless volume can be read'' either from front to back or even from back to front. Either way, it's a startling experience. Its illustrationszoom'' out, as though a viewer has rapidly backed away from each. For example, the first painting, of a jagged-edged red shape, turns out to be a detail of a rooster's comb; as the pages turn, the bird diminishes in importance, until the barn where he stands is shown to be a toy on a magazine's cover. That magazine dangles from the hand of a dozing boy, who himself becomes but a smudge on an advertising billboard. These shifts in perspective repeat until the book abandons earth altogether. The last image is a tiny white sphere-our planet-against a night sky. The bold color and level of detail in Banyai's cartoons recall Prince Valiant'' or another of therealistic'' Sunday comics. If the concept is not wholly new, the execution is superior. Readers are in for a perpetually surprising-and even philosophical-adventure. All ages. (Mar.)

ALA Booklist (Wed Feb 01 00:00:00 CST 1995)

Beginning with a close-up of a rooster's comb, each picture zooms out to give a more distant perspective; for example, the camera zooms out to show increasingly distant figures of children watching the rooster. Then, a large hand appears, showing that the scene was not depicting a real farm, but a toy farm set. But zoom out a few more times, and the scene reveals that the picture of the girl playing with the farm set is really on the magazine held by a boy, who's sleeping in a chair, which is by a pool, which is on an ocean liner, which is out at sea--no, wait--that picture is on a cruise-line poster on the side of a city bus, but that picture is on a television screen in the Arizona desert . . . and so on until the earth is shown from above, growing smaller with each turn of the page. The final scene is one white dot on a black page. Clear-cut paintings outlined in ink appear on each right-hand page; the left-hand pages are black. Not a story, but an idea book, it makes the viewer ask, What am I really seeing here? This clever picture book could be intriguing or irritating, depending on the viewer's frame of mind, but children will find it worth a look. Once, anyway. (Reviewed February 01, 1995)

Horn Book (Sat Apr 01 00:00:00 CST 1995)

In a wordless book, an imaginary camera pulls back from scene after scene, revealing each as a small part of a larger scene: a girl playing with a toy village is actually the cover of a magazine; the boy holding the magazine on board a ship is actually part of a poster advertising a cruise line; the poster is an ad on a bus seen on television by a cowboy. Both the concept and the book design are distinctive--the layout, with its glossy black pages opposite the 'zooming out' scenes, reflecting the philosophy of the final page, in which the camera pulls back to reveal a tiny earth surrounded by black space.

Kirkus Reviews

Each page of this wordless book by newcomer Banyai is a close- up detail from the scene on the next page. The drawings are realistic in slightly bedazzled colors, and the effect is of a movie camera panning backward, faster and faster, beginning with the red comb of a jaunty rooster and ending with a distant view of Earth whirling through space. Along the way, several surprises unfold, as each commonplace detail is shown to be but a small piece contained in a totally unexpected scene. Once readers reach the end, they can work from back to front for a zoom-in effect. The images are not always compelling, but this book has the fascinating appeal of such works of visual trickery as the Waldo and Magic Eye books. (Picture book. 4+)"

School Library Journal

PreS-Gr 3--This wordless picture book re-creates the effect of a camera lens zooming out. For example, one illustration shows a boy on a cruise ship, the next shows him from a distance, and the next reveals the whole ship. Finally, the viewpoint moves back farther and it turns out that the ship is actually a poster on a bus. The perspective continues to recede, revealing the bus as an image on a television screen. Three pages later, viewers see that the person watching TV is drawn on a postage stamp. The final picture shows a view of Earth from space. To heighten the effect, all of the full-color illustrations appear on the recto, while each verso is completely black. It's fun to watch the transition in perceptions as a farm becomes a toy, the girl playing with it is on a magazine cover, etc. The novelty soon wears off, however, and nothing else about the book is memorable. The paintings themselves are not particularly interesting and would not stand alone well. David Wiesner's Free Fall (Lothrop, 1988), David Macaulay's Black and White (Houghton, 1990), and Ann Jonas's Reflections (Greenwillow, 1987) use visual tricks, but also have richer artwork and more involving action.--Steven Engelfried, West Linn Library, OR