Giant Steps, a lyrical, easy-going anytime book on perspectives

Perspective and the relatively simple art of looking at something from a different angle take practice. It’s the paradigm shift in the same camp as illustrations that are obviously one thing, until your friend points out that they see the other side of the same thing. Giant Steps is an illustrated book that takes its motivation from the first category. For example, I’m at the pool now, watching our 13 year-old practice the delicate art of making friends.  A scary-looking spider was just climbing up my leg, and I panicked and squished it with Giant Steps. The scale of the pool would be drastically different if we were to envision a whale in it. The spider’s last vision in one of its eight eyes was a massive flat board, with illustrations of other insects on it.

Giant Steps is also about play, the power of imagination, spending the afternoon outside and not caring about a screen for a period of time. A kid puts on their hat and rain boots as they get ready for an adventure. They see a green snake as they enter the garden. However, once they take a couple of steps, you see the nozzle and realize that it’s just a hose. All of this is from the perspective of a large being looking down. The fact that it looks like a snake is something audiences will infer from the book, before it clears it up by establishing that this kid is simply in the garden.

The kid goes deeper in his adventure. The channels that the rain has created are massive rivers that the giant can easily cross. He presses two tree seeds in an attempt to create a helicopter that mimics a dragonfly. When he goes to the nearest body of water they see a million eyes looking at them that ust might be in the shape of an alligator. There are a set of footprints in the woods that look like they belong to a giant, one even bigger than him. The kid tries to outrun the giant, but he’s unsuccessful and is snatched up by him and given a ride back home.

Giant Steps is a patient, lyrical illustrated book that feels like poetry, but isn’t. One sentence is stretched out over a couple of pages and there are some ellipsis that wander off like the imagery in the book. That’s not the same sense as a thought that never gets finished. These are wandering thoughts of you looking at a cloud that looks like a dog, then another one looks like a dragon and next you start looking at the lake or trees that are off in the horizon. Being spacey and daydreaming are two different things, and Giant Steps is firmly in the camp of creative daydreaming. When young audiences look at the book they’ll imagine their toy cars and what their imaginary drivers must think of them. The ant crossing their garden will look like them if they were climbing over something five times their size. That scary-looking spider near your knee is probably just misinterpreting your leg hair for a forest.

The book’s layout also adds to its curiosity factor. It’s much more vertical than other illustrated books. This allows it to be easily held in one hand while the other one is turning the pages. Granted, this is a very subtle detail, but when paired with the effective use of negative space and realistic illustrations, it will draw young audiences in. It’ll be read by an adult to a group of kids, and then a couple of them will thumb through it looking at the illustrations. They’ll imagine what their backyard looks like from a different perspective, how the insects see them and how they compare next to a skyscraper or a giraffe. On a grander scale, teaching kids about perspective and different ways of thinking could enhance their critical thinking skills, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.  

Giant Steps is by Anais Lambert and is available on Blue Dot Kids Press.