Jungle, A Photicular Book, as close to it as you’ll get from home

Photicular photography is also known as Lenticular photography. Growing up I had some baseball cards that were produced in that manner. They provided a crude 3D effect that made it look like the players were swinging the bats if you moved the card. Currently our son has a lunchbox that use photicular photography on it. Jungle, A Photicular Book is the third in a series of books by Dan Kainen that has its subject matter running, scratching, flying and slithering off of the page.

In theory, a book on nature images based on the technology that I see on my child’s lunchbox is not entertaining. It’s the quality of the technological difference that really makes Jungle stand out as a book that must be seen to be believed.

Check out these images from Jungle from @WorkmanPub – moving pictures to educate and fascinate. #kidlit pic.twitter.com/Mc850Pb2y8

— Trey Burley (@Daddymojo) September 12, 2016

For example, the range of movement in our child’s lunchbox is quite limited. The characters are moving their arms a little bit and waving at you. This is OK for a lunchbox and kids like it, but adults have seen it before and would be quite bored with a book featuring these types of jungle images.

Jungle has the tongue of an Amozonian Whipsnake fully come out of its mouth and back in. The Bengal Tiger is physically sprinting through the jungle. The Leaf Frog has its eyes literally bugging out in an utterly alien fashion.

The page that faces each moving images is text on where the animal lives, how big they get and other key facts. This text is such that middle school readers will be able to read it and follow along with minimal assistance.

Jungle, A Photicular Book is fun education that grabs people and drags them into the book. Our 6 year old flipped out when he saw it. “Oh, yeah, I’m taking this book to school”, he said. Even though the text is far above his reading level he wants to be involved in the book. He’ll sit there as I read it to him and thumb through the pictures for a seemingly endless amount of time.

Jungle is just a book with lenticular photos in the same way that Robert Sabuda and Matthew Reinhart only produce pop-up books. Sabuda and Reinhart’s pop-up books are an engineering marvel that our kids are allowed to see, but with us turning the pages.

Jungle is durable and OK for any age. Parents will want to show young children how to use to book-and point out not to remove any of the tabs that loosely connect the two pages that face each other.  Our 6 year old has the book in his room so he can read it and we’re not worried about it at all. We point this out because as fabulous a book it is, it’s also $25.95. The spine of the book is thick and its construction is very sturdy.

Kainen’s two previous books that used this photography method were Ocean and Polar.  Jungle is published by Workman Publishing.