Double Take

Submitted by Mr. Eric!

The philosopher Alan Watts once said “Reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot, you know.” By saying this, he meant that how we perceive the world around us makes up our reality. Double Take! A New Look at Opposites, by Susan Hood and illustrated by Jay Fleck, explores this fairly complex concept in a way that children can understand. Throughout the book a little boy and his friendly elephant companion show us that there are always multiple ways to see any situation and that they can all be considered “correct.” For instance, one page shows a little mouse high above the boy in a skyscraper; in this instance the boy is LOW and the mouse is HIGH. But, when it’s revealed that the Elephant is up on the tippy top floor of the building it’s clear that both the mouse and the boy can be considered LOW. If something was even higher than the elephant, perhaps up in space, them all of them would be LOW. The idea that your viewpoint influences how you see the world, and that everyone has a different viewpoint is an important lesson for adults and kiddos to keep in mind. Double Take elegantly makes this lesson clear to children and drives this point home on one page with the message “Point of view (where you are) can affect what you see. Go in close. Then back up – you’ll see differently!” See this book listed in our catalog