My daughter likes perusing books with visual puzzles in them, the kind where you have to find hidden creatures or hidden messages. She mentioned this to me again the other day which made me remember a book we’d bought in Edinburgh, Scotland a few years ago. Take a Closer Look: The Big Book of Optical Illusions and Visual Oddities by Keith Kay is a rich compilation of various kinds of optical illusions which you can try and figure out with your child. For the last week, my daughter and I have been going through a couple of pages every night and have been enjoying ourselves. Some of the illusions appear on Keith Kay’s website; there are some commonly known ones like the 1915 sketch by W.E. Hill of the old lady/young girl but there were also many I’d never seen before. At the back of the book, there is also an answer page which is a good thing, because sometimes no matter how hard you look, you sometimes just cannot see the thing supposedly there! Huh? I can’t see it Mom, turn to the answer page was an oft repeated refrain. There’s also a page on shadow puppetry that you can try with your hands on a wall at night — a good bedtime activity if you have a good lamp on your night stand. As much as I love reading aloud to my daughter, I do also appreciate these books where you interact with your child in a different way than just reading. Do you know of any good optical illusion books you’ve shared with your child? Let me know and I can seek them out for my daughter to enjoy!