Zoom

It's books like these- the ones I read as a child- that really helped shape the person I am today. The Phantom Tollbooth also falls into this category, and whereas that one built a foundation for my love of knowledge, language, and reading, this one helped to form inside me a love of the unknown, as well as a mind that's always trying to see the bigger picture.

As for the book- well, everything you need to know is in the title. It's a series of images that zoom out more and more, revealing that nothing is at first what it seemed. A valuable lesson indeed, even (and perhaps especially) as kids raised on this book enter their adult years.

Probably one of my favorite children's books i've ever read. The concept is simple. Through a series of images that are continuously followed by the same image but zoomed out, this book takes you through diverse settings all over the world. The constant shifting in scale and size made me really think about what it means to truly focus on a single image. We are constantly looking at frames of images on many sources daily, almost suggesting that a window to our world can be seen through whatever image we place in front of ourselves. On the other hand, this book suggests that no matter how small our world may look, we live in an open world that can never be contained. When the book is open, every page on the left side is completely black. show more At first I was confused as to why this was necessary. Then I realized that it helps to establish continuity between each proceeding image. Composition of the image and where our eye trace should be is a key factor in telling the story here, and it is done very well in this book. This is a wonderful example of complex storytelling through images alone. show less

Even though this book doesn't have words, I absolutely loved the images that take you through world that Istvan Banyai created. I think that this "read" would be great for early elementary aged students! I think the way to read this book would be to ask the kids what they notice in the pictures and what they think the next image will be!

Hungarian-born artist Istvan Banyai's debut picture-book, Zoom, which first saw print in 1995, and was followed by Re-Zoom in 1998, is a boldly illustrated wordless journey, one that takes the reader (viewer?) on to an increasingly distant point from its original subject. It should, as my friend Lisa notes in her own review, really be called "Zoom Out." Opening with a close-up shot of a rooster's comb, then backing up to a view of the rooster as a whole, then to a scene encompassing some children looking at the rooster, and so on, the book concludes at a far remove from its starting place.

I appreciated the concept of Zoom, and found the artwork attention-grabbing, with its shifting (but always vibrant) color palette, and cartoon-like show more style. Unlike some other notable wordless picture-books (David Wiesner's Flotsam springs to mind in this respect), there is no real story here. That said, there is a visual sequence, and I was distracted, approximately three quarters of the way through (in the scene on the Solomon Islands), to note that Banyai abandons this sequence, in which each image contains the last one, in order to "pull out" in a more general way. It seemed like such a careless thing to do, in an otherwise carefully crafted book, that it particularly stood out to me. Still, leaving that aside, this is an engaging, well-designed book, one that I would recommend to readers looking for wordless picture-books. show less

wow, this book plays with perspective. Every page is exciting to see how things look as you "zoom out". You could really play with the imagination when creating text to go with each page. I would do this with any age in a classroom, maybe assign a page or have each student pick a page and then write about what see, they could write a story, a peom, or maybe even a song.

Focused-in on one picture each page, we then zoom out to find that the picture we were observing is not what it seems. This book is all about perspective, and it keeps you engaged without the use of words. A picture is a million words in this book, and makes you realize that not everything is what it seems.

I loved this book. I was intrigued with each page, and even more excited to see what was to come. This book can teach children that if you look too close at something, you can miss the big picture. Young readers can even create their own story to this book, leading to creative writing skills and thinking outside the box. I give this book 5/5 stars because it is absolutely brilliant.

It is a good fantasy book without words. When you turn the next page, your thought about the plot on the previous page will be changed because the world in the book keeps being zoomed out. But if you choose to read it backwards, the surprise will also come to you. In conclusion, it is a creative book that persuades me to view things in daily life differently and also not to make an arbitrary decision because there are probably something waiting for me to discover. It is suitable for any age.