The Other Side

The Other Side by Istvan Banyai

This is an interesting book that was hard for me to follow at first, but when I read it the second time I understood what the author was doing. Every page on the front and back has different perspectives on the same situation. For example, a little boy looks out the window of an airplane onto the world, but on the other side, in the plane, a couple examines a travel brochure of where they are going. The following pages take us inside of that very brochure and to the very destination in the picture, and the people in the brochure are looking up at the plane at the same time. Each page has a clue that leads into the next page. It reminds me of a combination of the book Zoom, which was also a wordless picture book, and QUICK! Turn the Page. Zoom is a book that uses just pictures and continues to "zoom" out to show the bigger picture as a whole, and QUICK! Turn the Page is a book that directs readers to turn the page as quick as possible before something bad happens in the book. However whatever happens on the previous page is resolved on the following page, showing a little bit of perspective as well. The Other Side is a sort of combination of these two books, with a unique twist, and just a really interesting book that teaches the concept of perspective and shows the power of illustrations.