Here is a children book project I made for "Carlton Books" [amazon.co.uk], "National Geographic Kids" [amazon.com] and "Ça m'intéresse" [amazon.fr]. It looks really fantastic and the pictures are large to enjoy the details! I made this book for all the children in the world and for their parents to inspire them. It allows the young reader to explore the mysteries that lie right inside our own minds (including the key scientific concepts of perspective and perception).
The cover of the book
Do we live in a virtual or real world? We actually live in a “reallusive” world… Illusions are not totally unreal, because we feel them. The outside world is mediated through our sense organs so what we perceive and feel are just representations of reality. To illustrate this concept, the philosopher Alfred Korzybski once said: “the map is not the territory!” (The map is in fact a symbolic depiction of a territory)
However, the only things that seem real and we cannot doubt are our inner emotions: we cannot doubt that we are happy, sad, in love, or in grief, when such states apply. The only other thing we cannot doubt is... to doubt!
Writing and illustrating optical illusion books for kids is not an easy task, because they are less fooled by visual illusions than adults. This is due to the fact that the brain’s capacity to consider the context of visual scenes, and not just focus on single parts of scenes, develops slowly. Sure, visual context is important in object recognition, but it can be sometimes very misleading when trying to accurately estimate the actual size or color of an object. That’s why grown-ups literally see the world less accurately than they did as children. But not me, as I still see the world through my child’s eyes!
Hannah is holding the National Geographic version of the book...
