“The Other Side” by artist Istvan Banyai is a wordless picture book all about shifting perspectives. It challenges the assumption that we could ever know the full story. We might think we do, but there is always more: more above, more below, more beyond, and more on the other side.
I like to leave my copy out on a coffee table for guests to thumb through. It’s fun watching their reactions as they turn the pages and, slowly, the realisation dawns that they are looking not at a random collection of clean and bold illustrations but, in fact, at a cleverly-constructed chain of interconnected events that are all occurring simultaneously on the flip side of one another.
It fascinated Madeleine, too, on the weekend. For approximately 30 seconds.