Ah, “The Dream of growing,” lots of possibilities there. But wait:

Each of eleven pictures similarly augments itself via the magic of glow-in-the dark paint; a twelfth offers dreamers a blank page covered with the stuff on which they can draw their own wishes or totems. This wouldn’t be Groundwood if there weren’t an additional layer of weirdness, so the book includes “The Dream of the dead singer” (he leads a skeleton band) and “The roommate Dream” (a Wild Thing succubus) among the choices. Dream on!

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before heat...

The book oscillates between charming and disconcerting. The faceless party-goers (anonymous in a Peanuts-adult sort of way) seem out of control, ignoring the children who are out of place at the raucous party. The two children side-step potential hazards and cautiously examine the more questionable guests. The girl reinterprets each scene for the boy to make the unchild-friendly place more tolerable, and her inventive descriptions are cleverly illustrated under the heat-sensitive sections.

...and after.

The boy’s discomfort is evident; as he cowers from the influx of strange items and people, the girl protectively ushers him through the chaos. The pair climbs a tree and finds some respite in nature. The story ends on the back cover as the children walk away together with backs to the reader, a reminder that they are destined to become adults like those they have left behind.

I wish it wasn’t so difficult to use the heat-sensitive pages. Eventually I used a hair dryer to uncover the images as the marketing materials suggested. I liked subtle details such as a squirrel mother with half-finished laundry—the animals seem more responsible than their human counterparts.

This book will undoubtedly appeal more to adults, who will pick up the story’s commentary on neglect and lost innocence. Although they will probably be fascinated by the interactive illustrations, I’m not sure kids will get it. But, like me, they may enjoy stepping into this alternate universe, where seemingly ordinary objects are revealed to be “fulla canaries” or other surprises.

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Seder’s Wizard of Oz illustrates ten well-known quotations from the movie with Scanimated scenes to give a quick guide to the plot. It is a cool thing to look at—it amused me like flip books do. However, I was a little confused by the scene choices. The book concludes with the projected face of “the Great and Powerful Oz.” I suppose it’s a difficult movie to reduce to ten scenes, but perhaps it shouldn’t be. How could you not end with Dorothy returning home? And how could you not include the famous mantra “there’s no place like home?”

Although The Wizard of Oz was fun to flip through, I don’t think I would spend $14.95 on it: it doesn’t hold up to repeat readings, and the animated pictures made me a bit dizzy after a while. If you want to experience Wizard of Oz motion picture magic, stick with the movie itself.

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