Palazzo Inverso

May 17, 2010
M.C. Escher's grayscale tessellations and stairways-to-nowhere set the stage for this inspired adventure by Johnson (the Henry series). An architect's apprentice named Mauk (Escher's nickname) prepares for another day with "the Master," designing a grand palazzo. He jogs through courtyards, passing bricklayers "spilling bricks on the ceiling" and a fountain that is "falling up." Every surface is inside-out and upside-down, and mischievous Mauk is to blame: even though his only task is to sharpen pencils, he "might have turned the drawing around just a tiny bit" while the architect napped. Johnson's book design gives pause at first, with dark text running along the foot of each spread and pale text running upside-down along the top. This arrangement becomes clear on the last page, when the text crawls up the margin and the book flips to continue the circular story. The written tale, of Mauk defying gravity to evade punishment, unifies the perspective-busting illustrations, which acquire new meanings on the inverted run-through. Johnson's optical illusions salute Escher and establish a clever slapstick sequence. If the written narrative is flat, Johnson's visual game provides dizzying thrills. Ages 3–7.

May 1, 2010
Gr 2-4-With the enigmatic work of M.C. Escher as his inspiration, Johnson puts brush to paper to imagine a startling world that changes on every page. A grand "Palazzo" is under construction, and young Mauk, restricted to sharpening the Master's pencils, has mischievously shifted the building drawings. As a result, carpenters now stand on their heads, painters hang from the ceiling, and fountains spray down instead of up. With everything in disarray, Mauk races through the now-distorted "Palazzo" with the Master in close pursuit. Viewers can track his adventure through the running text at page bottom, which, with the help of an arrow, directs them, at the final page, to turn the book around. The story then continues with, of course, an appropriate shift in perspective, and readers soon find themselves back at the beginningor are they at the end? Children will delight in discovering Mauk in a variety of places and poses and will be intrigued with the inverted architectural details that Johnson supplies. With the help of brown-and-white multishaded drawings, the illustrator provides a never-ending loop of clever optical trickery. This is a great opportunity to introduce Escher (short biography appended) and to connect the story to some of Mitsumasa Anno's puzzle books as well as to David Macaulay's "Black and White" (Houghton, 1990)."Barbara Elleman, Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, Amherst, MA"

Copyright 2010 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2010
Grades K-3 Normally, M. C. Eschers work is the province of eye-candy posters for college freshman, but this picture book, is a nifty homage. Hewing to the Escher method of turning perspective inside out, this invites viewers to follow young Mauk, whose master is building a grand palace. With text running along the bottom of the page, Mauk dashes up and down stairs and around corners, dodging painters dangling from ceilings and walls, until he notices that all sense of direction has become bafflingly unmoored. On the last page, it turns out that Mauk has simply turned the masters drawing plans around a bit, and the narrative flips over to the top of the page and runs backward through the same set of visuals, this time with an entirely different meaning. Events can be a bit disorienting, but things even out by the endwhich is the beginningand presents another opportunity to spin back through the Mbius strip of the story. An undeniably impressive bit of optical trickery with an even neater narrative flip at the conclusion. Ed: the grade levels indicate this s/b in Younger readers, not Middle; fix?(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2010
In this riff on Escher's Relativity, a master builder's apprentice rotates the master's drawing; the next day confused workers are walking on ceilings and walls. Many of Johnson's busy sepia illustrations are purposefully confusing, meant to be viewed right side up and upside down, as is the book itself. Johnson has fun with optical tricks; one large plot hole is unfortunate.

(Copyright 2010 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)