Re-Zoom [Paperback]

Istvan Banyai (Author)

Book Description

Release date: November 1, 1998 | Age Range: 5 - 8 years | Series: Picture Puffin Books

Open this wordless book and take off on mind-bending visual journeys full of twists, turns, and surprises. Zoom from an Egyptian pyramid to an exotic jungle to a sandy beach. But if you think you know where you are, guess again. For in Istvan Banyai's mysterious landscapes of pictures within pictures, nothing is ever as it seems.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Re-Zoom resumes, or more accurately, reprises, the layout and nothing-is-as-it-seems perspective of last season's Zoom. Featuring detailed drawings backpainted on animation cels, this text-free volume opens with a red-on-blue cave painting that, with the turn of a page, becomes a detail on a wristwatch. The next spread reveals that the watch belongs to a young man doing a rubbing of carved hieroglyphs... and so on. To surprise his audience, which may already expect the sequence of pictures to expand to infinity, as in Zoom, Banyai toys not only with spatial relations but with time and with cultural referents: people in 19th-century garb, admiring an image of Napoleon, turn out to be on a movie set; a woman in traditional Japanese dress sports a yellow Walkman. There are nods to the arts as well. A black-and-white Alfred Hitchcock and a blue bodhisattva sit astride a thundering elephant, and a dejected-looking Picasso rides the New York City subway. The finale-which leaves readers in a subway tunnel as the train's red taillights recede-may not be as mindbending as Zoom's outer-space flight, but is nonetheless a clever solution. All ages.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From School Library Journal

Kindergarten-Grade 5?This remarkable companion to Zoom (Viking, 1995) is a visual journey, a cinematic picture book without words. Viewers are shown something that turns out to be just a piece of something larger, and thus not at all what they saw (or thought they saw) in the first place. With each page, one takes a step back to see the broader context. The image of an ancient archer is just a figure on a watch, the hand wearing the watch is making a rubbing in an Egyptian tomb, which turns out to be the Obelisk of Luxor in Paris, but not really because it's just a movie set...and on and on and on, until the final page, where the lights of a subway car disappear into a tunnel to become two eyes staring in the darkness?or so it appears. While not the most technically accomplished artist, Banyai makes up for it in originality, an assured sense of design and composition, and an avant-garde sensibility that children, especially older ones, will love. He mixes traditional and contemporary images in a sly way: for example, one picture shows a woman in traditional Japanese garb, wearing a walkman, looking right at viewers with a trace of a smile on her face. His is a truly global view, moving easily from Europe to Asia to the U.S. (although you never really know where you are). Children?small people in an adult-sized world?are often fascinated with size and perspective. Re-Zoom comments on that, on reality and illusion, on visual awareness, on all sorts of things. A fun book with a lot to "say"?all in all, a valuable addition.?Lauralyn Persson, Wilmette Public Library, IL
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Age Range: 5 - 8 years
  
• Paperback: 64 pages
• Publisher: Puffin; Reprint edition (November 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 014055694X
• ISBN-13: 978-0140556940
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 0.2 x 9.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #17,024 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #58 in Books > Children's Books > Arts, Crafts & Music > Art

More About the Author

Istvan Banyai, creator of the award-winning children's book Zoom and The Other Side, has produced illustrations for such publications as the New Yorker, Playboy, and Rolling Stone; cover art for Sony and Verve Records; and animated short films for Nickelodeon and MTV Europe. He lives in Connecticut.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars THIS BOOK LEAVES ME SPEECHLESS...(and anyone who March 23, 2000

By T. Reinhardt

Format:Paperback

has read any of my other reviews knows that being speechless isn't one of my major problems :- D

There isn't a written discription of this book that is adequate... The book is entirely visual. It is one continuous picture that changes in perspective by "ZOOMING" in on a part of the prior picture. It's like looking at a snow-globe....than being in the snow-globe....than being in a picture IN the snow-globe. The artwork is fascinating and the ability to pre-think the work as a whole would have daunted me if i were the artist... What a gift this book is. I bought it for my son but it has made a much more incredable impact on any adult i show it to. if you choose this book you will NOT be sorry. And it makes and excellent gift for a person "who has everything". I think if i had to be stuck on a desert island with one book this would be it!

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A visual feast of perspective! June 2, 1998

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

Banyai manages to capture the readers imagination with brilliant illustrations as he pulls away from a minute detail that becomes a bigger part of the picture. My 9 year old son and I read this masterpiece over and over and as we journeyed deeper into to pages, an overwhelming sense of the largess of the world came to mind. This is a must read! It is thought provoking and riviting.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Even Better Than Zoom September 5, 2005

By K. Peterman

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Once again Istvan Banyai takes your perception on a roller coaster ride. This amazing sequel is even better than Zoom. Thoroughly enjoyable and could also be used as part of a motivational speech on seeing things as they are and aren't. Perception isn't always reality.