Book Description
for Inside Outside by Anne-Margot Ramstein and Matthias Aregui
From Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC)
Each page spread of this wordless, oversized picture book offers paired perspectives on the same scene. A close-up of a duckling still curled inside an unhatched egg and that egg as part of a larger marsh-scape. An explorer dangling by ropes inside a large cave opposite the scene outside the cave, where the rope is anchored. The view from inside and outside a large cage of brightly colored birds, a castle where there is evidence of a recent escape, a wave-tossed boat, a deep-in-the-depths submarine … Every turn of the page is a surprising pair of compositions that, at first glance, seem to have no relation to any that came before. There is a great deal to notice within each pair, too, from the logical to the nonsensical, and different observers are sure to see different things and ask different questions in a book that isn’t a puzzle to solve, but sparks ideas to contemplate. Sophisticated graphics, with many angles and curves, colors and forms, makes this a book older readers may especially appreciate. (Ages 5–10)
CCBC Choices 2020. © Cooperative Children's Book Center, Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 2020. Used with permission.