Eye Spy: Wild Ways Animals See the World by Guillaume Duprat

Abstract

Reviewed by: Eye Spy: Wild Ways Animals See the World by Guillaume Duprat Deborah Stevenson Duprat, Guillaume Eye Spy: Wild Ways Animals See the World; written and illus. by Guillaume Duprat; tr. from the French by Patrick Skipworth. What on Earth Books, 2018 40p ISBN 978-1-999802-85-1 $21.99 R Gr. 3-6 This French import creatively tackles the question of what different kinds of animals see when they look at the world. An opening foldout shows a scene through human eyes and notes the elements most likely to vary: field of vision, perception of light and color, ability to capture movement, and degree of sharpness. Subsequent spreads in the oversized title offer portraits of various animals with liftable flaps across their eyes that reveal the way they would see that same initial scene, with additional text addressing the differences, and with the opening foldout available for immediate comparison with human sight. It's a gimmick, sure, but it's a very effective one, allowing readers to see various kinds of vision as suitable variants rather than deficiencies. The book is particularly strong in demonstrating and discussing the limits of human vision ("Many birds see more colors than mammals. … That means that no matter what special ink is used to draw the scene, we humans can only imagine what birds see"), tacitly making the paradigm-shifting point that what we humans see as reality is incomplete. There's the occasional rough spot (a cat's field of vision is described as being greater than humans' despite their both being 200 degrees and covering the same ground in the sample scene), but overall this is an inventive look at and look through the eyes of the animal world. End matter includes a glossary, an index, and a list of sources. DS Copyright © 2018 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois